Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) (20 page)

Arabella turned to Angelique, shocked by the loss of color in her friend’s face. She had never seen Angelique so out of sorts. She watched as recognition dawned in the eyes of the beautiful woman with the baby. The two women stared at each other, as if their words had deserted them completely.

“Welcome to Pembroke House,” Arabella said, drawing Angelique into the sitting room after her. The windows faced south, so sunlight came through the panes of glass even in the early afternoon. The expanse of Pembroke Park lay below them, Pembroke’s mother’s rose garden giving way to green meadows dotted with sheep. Angelique looked neither at the beauty of the room nor at the park beyond. She fell into a chair close by the door as if her legs would no longer hold her up.

Arabella spoke to the woman with the child, who stared past her at Angelique. “I am the Duchess of Hawthorne. And you are?”

“Forgive me.” The young woman’s voice was as melodious as Angelique’s, though not quite as low. She curtsied to her hostess, the baby still caught up in her slender arms. She looked too frail to hold on to such a healthy infant, but the weight of the boy seemed not to bother her at all. Her brown traveling gown caught the light as she moved, and Arabella saw that the heavy wool was shot through with strands of gold that matched the flecks of gold in the woman’s eyes.

“I am Lady Ravensbrook, but you must call me Caroline.”

Arabella froze in midstride as she crossed the room to greet her guest. She stared into the eyes of the woman who had stolen the love of Angelique’s life. This was the girl from Yorkshire who had married Anthony Carrington, who for years had been Angelique’s lover.

Even Arabella, as cloistered as she had been in her husband’s house, had heard the gossip that had surrounded the Earl and Countess of Ravensbrook almost two years before. Anthony Carrington had left London for what was supposed to be a weeklong journey, only to disappear from town for months. When he returned for the Christmas season, he had brought into the city a very young, very beautiful wife. He had openly spurned Angelique at the Prince Regent’s Twelfth Night Ball. Angelique had taken another lover at once, but all the
ton
knew that she pined for Carrington still.

“Oh my,” Arabella said. “This is a difficult moment for you both.”

Angelique snorted with laughter from her perch by the door. A tentative smile crossed Caroline Carrington’s face. “Difficult is perhaps an understatement,” she said.

Angelique laughed out loud then, rising from her delicate chair to cross the room to Caroline. She extended her gloved hand as a man might, to show she carried no weapons. Caroline shifted the baby in her arms and took the offered hand of her old enemy.

“We have met before. You’ll remember that I am Angelique Beauchamp.”

“Of course, Countess Devonshire. I could never forget a lady as beautiful as you are.”

Angelique laughed again. “You are silver tongued. Have you any Irish in your blood?”

“Only French, on my mother’s side.”

“That explains it then. All French women can please with their tongues when they are of a mind to do it.”

Arabella blushed to the roots of her caramel hair, but Angelique and Caroline laughed together, their careful rancor giving way to genuine amusement. Anthony Carrington clearly had a taste for strong women.

Angelique leaned down to look at the baby, enveloping Arabella and Caroline in a cloud of orchid perfume. “What a beautiful child. You must be very proud of him.”

Caroline’s countenance lit as with a sunrise, her brown eyes turning to look upon her son’s sleeping face. “He is a wonder of the world.”

Angelique extended her hand, touching the baby’s cheek very lightly with one gloved finger. “Children are a blessing. You are a lucky woman.”

There was such naked longing in Angelique’s face that Arabella felt a lump rise in her throat. She had always assumed that her friend had taken precautions against child bearing whenever she was with one of her lovers, for her husband was ten years dead and a child would be more than inconvenient. It would be social suicide.

But for the first time Arabella saw that Angelique longed for children as much or more than she did. It was as if a window had opened into Angelique’s soul, and Arabella could see past her strength and her seductive beauty to a hidden pain beneath the layers of the woman she thought she knew. Arabella reached out and took her friend’s hand. Angelique did not shrug off her touch but caught Arabella’s hand fast in her own, as if to take strength from it.

Caroline Carrington, who had triumphed over her rival in every way possible, did not look triumphant. Nor did she cast her face into a mask of indifference or condescension. She reached out and laid her hand on Angelique’s arm.

“Lady Devonshire, will you hold Freddie for a moment? He is very heavy, a bit too heavy for me.”

This blatant lie drew Angelique’s gaze to Caroline’s face. But there was no triumphant mockery there, so Angelique opened her arms and took the baby into them. Freddie woke, his blue eyes opening to take in the ladies who stood over him. He smiled at his mother, before his eyes fastened on Angelique’s face.

There was a delicate moment when Arabella feared the baby might weep to find himself in the arms of a stranger, but then Freddie smiled, a beacon of light cast onto Angelique’s sorrow. Her friend seemed to heal a little as the baby’s eyes rested on her. She drew him close and pressed her lips to the top of his head.

“He is beautiful,” she said.

“I am blessed,” Caroline answered.

“We are all blessed so long as he is in a good mood,” a deep masculine voice announced from the doorway.

Caroline turned to the door with a smile. At the sound of that voice, its tone like velvet over steel, Angelique stiffened, baby Freddie still in her arms. Pembroke had entered, followed closely by Lord Ravensbrook.

Angelique extended her arms and handed the baby back to his mother. Arabella had always known that her friend was formidable, but she had never before seen her put on full armor. Angelique seemed to grow taller before her eyes and somehow more beautiful. If Arabella had not known better, she would have thought her friend an enchantress indeed, for in that moment Angelique became not just a beautiful woman relinquishing a baby who did not belong to her but a siren who might lead any man to his doom. But Angelique wanted to doom only one man: Anthony Carrington.

Caroline raised baby Freddie to her shoulder as she crossed the room to stand beside her husband. Though she and Angelique had laid their own weapons down, Anthony was another matter altogether. Arabella wondered, her throat tight with anxiety, if the peace the two women had managed to build in so short a time would be just as quickly decimated.

Pembroke did not intervene between them but stayed behind Anthony as if to watch his back. He had mentioned Ravensbrook to Arabella over the last few weeks as the one man in the world that he trusted. Now that she saw them together, Arabella knew that it went beyond that. In Ravensbrook, Pembroke had found a brother.

Ravensbrook was tall, even taller than Pembroke. He was dressed in a coat of deep brown that seemed to set off the hints of gold in Caroline’s gown. His cravat was beautifully tied, his waistcoat and buckskins immaculate.

He took in the room he stood in and all who stood there with him, cataloguing them as if seeking for weakness, as if he were a bird of prey. His chestnut eyes softened slightly when they settled on his wife, but the moment passed in less than a breath as he turned instead to stare at Angelique.

Arabella was not a woman comfortable with confrontation. She had avoided it at all cost all her life. But she had begun a new life now, and she would begin as she meant to go on. If Ravensbrook was Pembroke’s brother, Angelique was her sister. Arabella moved to her friend’s side.

Angelique seemed to glitter with hardness, her limbs stiff beneath their seductive lines. The dark blue of her gown brought out the sapphire of her eyes, but Arabella could see over that sapphire blue lay a sheen of tears.

In the end, it was Freddie who broke the strained silence. He gurgled, one hand gripping the front of his mother’s gown to steady himself as he turned back to Angelique. His eyes fastened on the woman who had held him only moments before, and his face broke into a smile that seemed to light the room. Angelique smiled back as she stepped forward to press her lips to the baby’s cheek.

“Your son is beautiful, Anthony. I see that he takes after his mother.”

Caroline laughed, and so did Pembroke. Arabella waited to see what Ravensbrook might do. His eyes did not smolder when he looked at the woman who had been his mistress for ten years. He did not seem to feel any lust for her, but neither did he seem indifferent. Angelique smiled as she looked up into her old lover’s face, and then she turned back to his wife. “May I hold him a moment longer? Freddie is too beautiful to relinquish so quickly.”

Caroline laughed, the dark honeyed tones of her voice filling the room with warmth. Arabella watched her anxiously but saw that she was sincere. “Of course. But don’t feel that you must keep him long. He is a great brute and very heavy.”

Angelique drew the baby close and kissed his forehead, walking with him to the settee by the empty fireplace. She sat with the baby on her lap for all the world as if she were a queen enthroned, surveying her domain. Ravensbrook smiled at her, and something seemed to pass between them, a private moment that Caroline did not notice. That moment seemed to mollify Angelique, to give her some measure of peace, for she turned back to the baby and jounced her knee beneath him, imitating a horse at a trot. She sang a little riding song to Freddie, who laughed and squealed with delight.

Caroline took her husband’s hand and led him to the settee opposite their child, drawing him down to sit beside her. The tea was brought in then, so Pembroke stepped farther into the room, though he still seemed flummoxed to find Ravensbrook, his wife, and Angelique in the same room and under his roof. Arabella saw that once more she must intervene.

She began to pour the tea, acting as hostess, since Pembroke seemed too out of sorts to do or say much of anything. She handed the tea around, beginning first with Angelique and then Caroline, serving the gentlemen next and herself last. There was nothing said in all that time, the only sound in the room Angelique’s soft singing, the clink of china, and the baby’s laughter.

“Well,” Arabella said. “I’m a country girl and too sheltered to know the etiquette for a situation like this. So I suppose we shall simply have to go on as civilized people do everywhere and drink our tea.”

Angelique laughed and the baby stood on her lap, reaching for her mouth with his fat fingers. She kissed his hands, one after the other, then handed him back to Caroline, who held out her arms for him.

“I am a country girl myself, and I agree that life is too short to worry with the past,” Caroline said. “I propose that we deal with the matter at hand, namely, the new Duke of Hawthorne.”

Pembroke shot a look at Ravensbrook, raising one fair eyebrow. The earl caught the look and spoke as if he and Pembroke were in mid-conversation already. “I try to keep things from her, but I’ve found that it’s simply not possible.”

“Now, if he would only stop trying, we might actually get one or two things accomplished.”

Ravensbrook reached for her hand. “I think we have managed one or two things.”

Baby Freddie opened his arms to his father, and Lord Ravensbrook took him up, pressing his lips to his son’s cheek.

Arabella offered the biscuit tray to Angelique, though she knew her friend did not eat much sugar. Angelique looked down at the cookies as if trying to decide which to take. She finally selected one and laid it on her saucer, happy no doubt to find a reason to keep her eyes off Ravensbrook with his son. The painful moment spun out, as if it might never end, and then finally, the moment passed. Ravensbrook did not see the tortured look that crossed Angelique’s face, which was all that mattered.

“The Duke of Hawthorne,” Caroline said, taking up the reins of the conversation once more, “is a bother and a nuisance, but one the lawyers can’t find their way around. Anthony, have you had any luck with the Prince?”

“No, love, I have not.” He turned to Arabella and she froze, caught in the heat of his dark chestnut eyes. The force of his personality, the command in his gaze made Arabella feel like a rabbit caught in a snare. Just as she felt panic rise within her, Pembroke pressed her hand.

“The Prince Regent cannot help me,” she said. “I believe he owes Hawthorne more than one favor.” She forced her voice to be steady, breathing deeply so that she did not swallow her words.

Ravensbrook did not seem to think anything amiss with her voice or the way she answered, and Angelique caught her eye, smiling at her. No one else knew how difficult it was for Arabella to deal with strange men.

“I do not think that he cannot, I think that he will not,” Anthony said. “At least not at the moment. You are right, Your Grace. The Prince Regent is pressed with problems of his own. The new duke is one of his most ardent supporters in the House of Lords and, more to the point, has bought a contingent of MPs in the Commons. Suffice it to say, His Highness is not at liberty to make an enemy of Hawthorne.”

“So we are on our own,” Pembroke said.

“Indeed,” Ravensbrook answered. “So it would seem.”

“I thank you both for the trouble you have taken. But there is no way to settle with Hawthorne,” Arabella said. “I must disappear.”

Pembroke stiffened beside her, his hand gripping hers as if he would never let her go.

Ravensbrook seemed to sense his friend’s displeasure, for something softened in his face as he spoke. “Please do not fear, Your Grace. The Prince cannot help you, but we will. Having the Earl of Ravensbrook stand by you is no small thing.”

“Once you are my wife, Hawthorne will not touch you. If he comes here, I will kill him myself.” Pembroke’s voice was as stiff as his back. He would not look at her but made this pronouncement to the room at large. Arabella tried to take her hand away from him but could not wrestle it from his grip.

“I beg to differ, my lord. I will marry no one.”

She stared at Pembroke as if she could force him to look into her eyes with the strength of her will alone. After a few moments, she began to notice the awkward silence in the room and that Angelique and Caroline were exchanging wary smiles.

“Your personal affairs are your own concern, Your Grace,” Ravensbrook said. “But the
ton
has heard of your foray into the world of the arts, Pembroke. It seems that most of our friends and acquaintances, even one or two of our enemies, are interested in seeing you play the King of Fairies on Midsummer’s Eve. So interested, in fact, that they are all coming here.”

Pembroke laughed, but his grip on her hand did not loosen. “Good God, you can’t be serious. I’ve come all the way to Derbyshire to get away from those people. Surely they will not travel three days to see one performance.”

“Indeed they will,” Anthony said. “And the new Duke of Hawthorne will be among them.”

Arabella took a sip of tea to tamp down her panic. When she set her empty cup on its saucer, she saw that her hand was shaking.

Angelique touched her arm before pouring fresh tea for everyone, beginning with Arabella. She pressed not one biscuit but two onto Arabella’s plate before offering the tray to everyone else. Pembroke took two, eating them in quick succession as if to fuel himself for battle.

“Well, Hawthorne may come here if he wishes,” Pembroke said. “If he wants to speak to you or even see your face, he will first have to come through me.”

Angelique caught her eye. “He will have to come through me as well.”

“There will be no need for such theatrics,” Ravensbrook said. “My man will dispatch him if it comes to that.”

“Or I will,” Caroline Carrington said, dandling her infant son on her knee. Baby Freddie, who had been listening solemnly to all that was said as if he understood it, caught sight of his mother’s beatific smile and gurgled with glee.

“I am sure that when His Grace is presented with our united front, he will simply retire from the field,” Ravensbrook said.

The assurance in his voice, his utter confidence made her wonder if he was as powerful as he claimed or simply mad with overconfidence. Arabella caught Angelique’s eye. As two women who had always been on their own, manipulating or dodging powerful men all their lives, they both knew that Hawthorne would not be so easy to dissuade.

Arabella drank her tea in two gulps. The warm liquid fortified her before Caroline leaned across the distance between them to place Baby Freddie in her arms. The weight of the child seemed to soothe her, and Arabella felt herself calm down as she looked into the baby’s blue eyes. She felt anchored by the child in her lap and protected by the people around her. But she knew that protection was an illusion. In spite of their good intentions and all their resources, they did not know Hawthorne as she did. They had not seen the light of possession in his eyes as he tried to take her on her husband’s bed with a knife in his hand. In spite of the warmth of the midsummer day, in spite of the baby in her arms, Arabella shivered. She needed to be gone. She had wasted too much time already.