Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) (5 page)

Hawthorne was gone. Perhaps he could not follow her into that enchanted place. She did not question her good fortune but breathed deeply of the soft green scent of the leaves, watching as the sunlight shone through the branches of the oaks overhead, the canopy covering her, separating her from the world. Bluebells grew along the edges of the path she walked on, and she followed it down to the riverbank where she and Pembroke had spent so many happy hours, simply sitting side by side, not talking, just watching the river as it slid quietly past them, her small hand in his great one.

In the dream, Pembroke was waiting for her there. He was not the boy she had known but the man she had just met again. He smiled at her openly as he once had done, as if he were free to love her, as if the pain that had passed between them had never been.

He reached into his coat pocket and drew out his mother’s ruby ring, the ring he had given her on the day he had asked her to marry him. Arabella at first felt a moment of fear, that she had lost it, that it was not tucked away in her small jewel case as it had always been. Then she stepped forward and took the ring into her hand. The ruby gleamed in the sunlight by the river, the depths of its red facets throwing hints of the sun back to her. She clutched the ring in her fist but did not put it on.

She woke then, before she could speak to him, before she could tell him how sorry she was. She clutched the ruby ring and the soft sheet of her borrowed bed. Arabella lay still for a long moment, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart.

She was not sure how the ring had come to be in her hand. She had packed it in her case when she fled, the leather satchel that now sat on a chair across the room. She must have taken it up before she slept, but she did not remember. Even as she held it, the round, rough cut of the ruby digging into her palm, she felt as if she were still in a dream.

She returned the ring to its place in her box. She buried that box once more at the bottom of her baggage, beneath simple gowns and linen petticoats, so that she would not have to look at it again.

Pembroke tried to make love to Titania with Arabella asleep down the hall, but his body failed him. He could not remember the last time a beautiful woman had lain naked beneath him and he had been left unable even to feel desire.

He was grateful that Titania was a friend as well as a professional, for she made a joke of the whole thing, telling him of the illustrious men she had slept with in the past who had not always been able to bring themselves to the sticking place. She had even managed to make him laugh before she fell asleep.

She did not leave him as she usually did but spent the night beside him, as if she might protect him from his divided soul. Of course, she could not. Still, Pembroke was grateful not to be alone. If he had been, the temptation to go to Arabella’s room would have been too great, and he would have behaved little better than Hawthorne.

In the morning, Pembroke waited for Arabella in the breakfast room, his coffee cooling in front of him, trying to read
The
Times
and failing. He read the same paragraph three times over before he finally gave up. As he cast the papers aside in disgust, Arabella stopped in the doorway as if the breakfast room was a den of iniquity and she had no wish to join the damned.

Pembroke rose to his feet, as he always did when a lady entered the room. He did not move again but watched as a footman drew out her chair, so that she might sit a little way down the table from him. Her simple dark blue gown showed the slender figure beneath it, the curve of her small breasts beneath the demure bodice making his mouth go dry. Every clever quip, every dismissive comment he had ever known seemed to vanish as he looked at her.

“You did not come to me last night,” Pembroke said, his voice sounding rusty in his own ears.

Arabella looked up at him, as calm as a bishop as a footman brought her tea. “Did you expect me to?”

“I had hoped you might.”

Arabella smiled then, and he caught a glimpse of the girl she had been. “Hope springs eternal, my lord, but I would not expect miracles.”

“Would it take a miracle for you to come to me?”

“Perhaps that is the wrong choice of words. I am no light skirt, and you…”

“I am a rake.”

“Yes.”

“You think to marry me then?”

Arabella laughed, the sound sweet in the sunlit room. Her laughter was always surprising, for it was not delicate and quiet as she was. There was nothing ladylike or demure about it. Arabella laughed from her belly and shook with her whole body as tears of mirth came into her eyes. Pembroke felt as if he had been catapulted into the past, long before they had been separated, long before she had married another. She had laughed like that during their picnic by the river when her bonnet had blown into the water and he had been forced to wade into the current to retrieve it.

“You have made it abundantly clear that you are not the marrying kind,” she said.

He took in the scent of cornflowers on her hair, and he felt the perfume like a fist in his sternum, a blow he had to take a moment to recover from. She had worn that same scent as a girl, and for a moment he was taken back to the forest in Derbyshire, eating the last of the summer berries, watching the river slide by.

“People change,” he said.

Her eyes turned to him, the same light blue as they were in his dreams, and he felt himself caught as if in amber.

“No,” she answered. “They do not.”

He forced himself to sit down, and a silence stretched between them. He heard the ticking of the clock in the hall and swallowed hard to clear his throat.

“You should not tease me, Pembroke. There is too much afoot for you to do nothing but make jokes.”

“I was not joking.”

Arabella smiled. “You think me the same simple girl I once was. I am no woman of the world, but I am old enough to understand a joke when I hear one.”

When had he last felt such longing for a woman? He wanted to bend down and kiss her soft pink lips, to run his hands over her shoulders, down to cup her breasts.

Every woman he knew threw herself at him. Countesses and baronesses pursued him relentlessly. Each wanted to sample his favors so that they might confirm for their friends whether or not his reputation for skill in bed was earned. The whores he dallied with were more honorable, giving and receiving pleasure for a fee and leaving afterward without a fuss. But none of those women, baronesses or courtesans, made him catch his breath as Arabella did.

“Thank you for taking me in last night, Pembroke,” she said. A light blush rose in her cheeks, and once more he felt the need to reach for her. “I suppose I should call you my lord earl.”

“You used to call me Raymond,” he said without thinking. He watched her face and thought he saw her flinch before she lowered her eyes, her brown lashes hiding any hint of her thoughts. A long silence stretched between them, and he cursed himself for a fool.

“You may call me anything you wish,” he said.

He took a sip from his coffee, which had long since gone cold. Pembroke set his cup down and gestured to the footman who stood behind him. His coffee was replaced in a moment and fresh bread set down at his elbow. “There is no need to thank me. No honorable man would turn his back on a woman in need.”

She looked at her empty plate. “No, I suppose not.” She raised her head, and he felt as if the cornflower blue of her eyes had pierced him. “But I have never before known an honorable man.”

He drank from his cup, swirling cream in it first, depositing a lump of sugar, though he always took his coffee black. He made another gesture, and a full plate was brought to her, heaped with stewed tomatoes, kidneys, eggs, and bacon. She stared down at it as if she had never seen food before, and for a moment he thought that she would have none of it. But Arabella remembered her manners, for she had always been refined, even as a girl. She lifted the heavy silver fork by her china plate and began delicately to eat the eggs. Pembroke offered her the basket of fresh rolls, and she took one of those and began to butter it.

“No toast?” she asked. He almost laughed at the inanity of the question. After ten years apart, they sat on opposite sides of his breakfast table. After spending a chaste night in the same house, she had little more to say to him than to ask for bread. A footman brought a plate of toast to her elbow.

“An affectation I brought home from the Continent,” Pembroke said. “I found that I cannot start the morning without a brioche.”

She stared at him without blinking, uncomprehending. He gestured to the basket between them. “
Brioche
means fancy French roll, Arabella.”

For a moment he thought he had embarrassed her, but as a delicate pink suffused her cheeks, Arabella dropped the roll she had been buttering onto her plate and began to laugh.

She wiped her eyes with her napkin, and Pembroke simply sat and stared at her, trying desperately to ignore the knife lodged in his chest. She had set that knife there ten years before. It was still there, just where she had placed it, cutting his heart in two.

She turned her bright blue eyes on him, all traces of diffidence and fear gone as if they had never been. She looked for a moment as free and happy as she had been as a girl. He had dreamed of that girl for many years, and here she sat at his breakfast table. He was grateful to whatever god might be that he had caught a glimpse of her.

“Arabella…”

He was not sure what he would have said, but whatever tender words he might have uttered, whatever mad declaration of undying passion he might have made died on his lips, unspoken. For the door to his breakfast room was flung open in the next moment, as if before a great wind. Arabella turned away from him, her eyes wide, to stare into the hazel green eyes of his mistress.

***

“Pembroke, for the love of God, since when do you take breakfast?”

The beautiful woman standing in the doorway stared at Pembroke imperiously, waiting for an answer. Her brassy red hair was a shade that could only come from a chemist. She was dressed this morning in a dark green gown of satin and pearls, cut low over her enormous cleavage. Her shoulders were thrown back, her cloak cast behind her, as if she had popped into the breakfast room on her way to better things. The woman looked like a carving that might adorn the prow of a ship. Arabella forced herself to take a sip of the black tea in her china cup.

“You didn’t go to Hawthorne’s party last night, and no doubt he is furious. When I see him, I’ll tell him that you found far prettier company than any he had on offer.”

The woman eyed her shrewdly, but Arabella didn’t sense any jealousy or spite in her assessment.

“I did not think to ask last night, but where have you been hiding this ravishing creature?” the woman asked. “She must be the reason why you’ve been so gloomy of late.”

“Titania.” Pembroke shot his mistress a look of warning, which she ignored.

“But of course she is!” Titania said, laughter rising. “I never knew you had a taste for the schoolroom, but there she sits.”

“I am not from the schoolroom, madame, I assure you,” Arabella said, rising to her feet. “Forgive me for not properly introducing myself last night. I am the Duchess of Hawthorne, and I must cast myself on your mercy.”

Titania sat down when she heard that, waving one hand as she shrugged off her cloak. Not one but two footmen jumped to do her silent bidding, bringing her a plate piled high with victuals as well as her own cup of tea. Clearly, she was a frequent visitor.

“At my mercy? Well, there’s a phrase I don’t often hear. Pembroke, sit down and stop gaping at us. The women are talking now, and you’re making me nervous.”

Lord Pembroke, landowner and cavalryman, sat down at his mistress’s bidding. Arabella smiled in spite of the jealousy that bloomed in her breast.

She had never had cause to speak to a woman of the
demimonde
before, and she doubted that she ever would again. Titania seemed to have more sense and kindness than any of the so-called ladies Arabella had met among the
ton
. There was a warmth and charm about Titania that made Arabella relax almost against her will. As they sat across the table from each another, Arabella tried to forget how often Pembroke took this magnificent creature into his bed. She failed.

The needs of men made her sick. She sometimes still woke in the night cringing away from the touch of her elderly husband in her dreams. The memory of his clammy touch and grunting in the night still made bile rise in her throat. And now thoughts of Hawthorne cutting the buttons off her nightgown would plague her. She shuddered.

That this woman took men into her bed for money was distasteful, but no more distasteful than being forced to marry an elderly man for a title. She and Titania had a great deal in common. Like all women, both lived their lives at the whims of men.

“What’s this talk of mercy then?” Titania took a huge bite of bacon and eggs, following it shortly with a forkful of kidney. Arabella sipped her cooling tea and forced herself to meet the woman’s eyes. For some reason Titania’s steady gaze made her feel safe.

“I am fleeing from the Duke of Hawthorne.”

“But he’s dead, Your Grace.”

“Not my husband, Madame Titania, but the new duke.”

“Oh… I see. You’ve gotten on his bad side already, have you?” Titania took another huge bite of kippers and tomatoes, her eyes never leaving Arabella’s face.

“He’s bent on marrying me.”

“And you’d rather be dead.”

Arabella blinked in surprise but answered steadily. “Yes.”

“Well, that is a pretty mess. That one is a blackguard, dark and dismal. Not fit company for a lady like yourself. Not fit company for me, though he pays quite well.”

Pembroke made a strangled noise of protest, which Titania dismissed with a wave of her fork. She chewed thoughtfully then made a pronouncement. “I wouldn’t see a dog go into that man’s hands for life, much less a woman. Whatever help you need from me, you’ve got. Pembroke has always been good to me, though I see his whoring days are over.”

Pembroke did not let that sally pass. “Titania, mind your tongue. There is a lady present.”

Titania did not look at all chastised but stared at Pembroke as if seeing him for the first time. “You poor bastard. God help you.”

He opened his mouth to shout again, but she simply waved him into silence with her tea cup. “Well enough. The Duchess of Hawthorne is a fine lady, so I’ll try to keep a civil tongue in my head. But if you’ve made an enemy of the new duke, you need to leave the city before your tea’s gone cold.”

“You will tell no one that you saw me here?” Arabella asked.

“I give you my word, I will not. No one thinks to ask actresses and whores much. If someone asks, I’ve never seen or heard of you.”

Titania stood to leave, drawing her cloak over one arm. Arabella stood when she did and came around the table to offer her hand. “Thank you, Madame Titania. I am in your debt.”

“You may call me Molly, Your Grace, if we meet again.”

“I am honored, Molly. And you must call me Arabella.”

Titania laughed, her booming warmth filling the room again. “Oh no. Too rich for my blood. Your Grace will do until you marry again.”

“I have no intention of ever marrying. Once was enough.”

Titania cast an eye on Pembroke, who sat glaring at her from behind his coffee cup. “Well, time will tell. God speed, Your Grace. I’ll leave by the back gate. Wear my cloak when you climb into Pembroke’s carriage. It will throw Hawthorne off your scent. And get out of town before another hour has passed.”

Arabella did not tell her that she had no intention of going anywhere with Pembroke, that he had done too much for her already. She simply said, “I will.”

“You need not trouble yourself on the duchess’s account, Titania. I will look after her,” Pembroke said.

Titania shot a sardonic smile his way before she crossed the room to stand beside him. “So I see, my lord. So I see.” She leaned down and kissed him then as if he was a clear running river and she had the need of a drink. Arabella blinked in surprise and horror, not knowing where to look, unable to look away.