Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) (7 page)

With no lady’s maid to attend her, Arabella rang for hot water, recalling her youth when her father thought such expenses as personal servants a needless extravagance.

The bedroom Pembroke had taken for her was comfortable, with dark wood beams between swathes of whitewashed plaster. The air was scented with thyme and rosemary. As she washed her face, Arabella could smell chicken roasting in the kitchen below and hear the faint clamor of copper pots being set down on the stove.

The kitchen had been her haven in her father’s house during the dark years of her childhood after her mother’s death. She would sneak away during her governess’s nap each afternoon and spend an hour with her father’s cook, Mrs. Fielding, who spoiled her, feeding her pastry fresh from the oven. Mrs. Fielding had always proclaimed that Arabella was far too small for a healthy girl and that she needed fattening up. Arabella had eaten every morsel her benefactress bestowed upon her, setting the cook high in the pantheon of her heart, worshiping her as she worshiped her long-dead mother.

Arabella did not change her dress, for she had brought only a few more suitable gowns with her. Her bag was heavy with the flotsam and jetsam of her life. She had not pressed many gowns into it. She had only the boots on her feet and the ugly black-dyed bonnet trimmed in blue ribbon that now rested on her vanity table. Perhaps she might find time to sew a new dress while in the country. In her father’s house, a few of her old dresses might still lie in the clothespress, gowns she had worn as a girl, all of which had been deemed too shoddy to bring into her new life as the Duchess of Hawthorne.

She heard Pembroke come back into the sitting room. Arabella met her own eyes in the looking glass and breathed deeply, shoring up her courage before she stepped into the parlor.

He stood by the door as if afraid to come in. She could not remember seeing him so uncertain of his welcome even when he was a boy. Her heart seized, and without thinking she extended her hand to him and offered him a chair by the fire across from her own.

“Dinner will be served in a moment,” Arabella said. “Come and sit. May I offer you a brandy? I had the staff bring up their best bottle. I hope it will suit.”

Pembroke pushed his dark blond hair out of his eyes and simply stared at her. He blinked as if waking from a deep sleep. “There is no need. I have brought my own.”

Arabella sat and he followed her example, watching as she drew her chair close to the table. Pembroke’s sensuous lips quirked in another smile, and her heart paused in its beating.

She told herself that she must not stare at him, but she found that she could not bring herself to drop her gaze. They sat for a long moment in silence, the expanse of their empty dinner table and the cheerful crackle of the fire between them.

Their dinner of roasted lamb and new potatoes, creamed spinach, and carrots in wine sauce was brought in, and they turned their attention to it as if they might not ever see another meal again. They ate together in companionable silence until Pembroke asked her a question over pears in brandied sauce.

“When you are free, what will you do?”

Arabella froze, her dessert fork halfway to her lips. She set the fork down again, the pear speared on it forgotten. Her hand trembled, and she forced it to be still, pressing it hard against the white cloth on the table between them.

She was afraid to voice her desires, lest they be taken from her. But the fact that he had thought to ask the right question, when no one else on Earth, save perhaps Angelique, ever would, made her heart catch in her throat.

“I would like to live quietly somewhere,” she said. “If Hawthorne stays away, I would take a cottage in the village near the old manor house where I grew up. I would grow roses and plant an herb garden.”

“You won’t live in your father’s house?” Pembroke asked.

She could not help from shuddering. “Dear God, no.”

Pembroke took a swig of his brandy and reached for her hand. He toyed with her fingers almost absently.

She felt as if she had swallowed her tongue. She tried to pull away, to get up from the table, but he held her still. He spoke as if he did not feel her struggle, his eyes on her fingertips. “Why not live there? The house is yours as a part of your dower lands.”

“No,” she said, forcing herself to speak. She stopped trying to take her hand back. “I love Derbyshire. It is home. But I will never live in that house again.”

Even with Pembroke’s hand on hers, distracting her, she found her mind going back to those days in her father’s house, the care she had to take every day not be noticed, not to cause him to turn his rage on her. No matter how careful she had been, no matter how hard she had tried to please him, his temper would snap, and she always caught the brunt of it. Whether a slap on her face or a more formal beating with his riding crop, she bore the scars of her father’s attacks on her back and on her soul. She knew that she would never be rid of them.

If Pembroke saw the pain that the mention of her father’s house caused her, he was kind enough not to speak of it. But he did not let go of her hand. He took another drink from his brandy glass.

“When did your father die?” she asked.

He took his hand away then, as she had intended. His face closed off, like a gate being drawn against invaders. He had hated his father, who had beaten him, too, until Pembroke was too old for it. His father had been a wastrel and a drunkard. Arabella watched as Pembroke pushed his brandy glass away.

“He died five years ago.”

“And yet you did not come home.”

“There was a war to be won,” he said.

“They might have won it without you.”

“I would not leave my friend.”

“Anthony Carrington,” Arabella said.

“Yes. I stayed on the Continent until the war was over.”

Arabella leaned back in her hard oak chair. She saw a hint of the pain in his eyes that he meant to hide, but she pressed on, heedless of it.

“You drink as he once did.”

Pembroke’s eyes were sharp on hers, twin blades that pinned her to her chair. They both knew that she was no longer speaking of Anthony. She took a shallow breath, for the air had suddenly become heavy, hard to breathe.

“I drink to please myself.”

“And gamble and visit ladies of ill repute? For your own amusement? Or to get back at him?”

“He would not have cared, had he known. My father never loved me, as you well know.”

“My father did not love me either,” she said.

“It is best that they are both dead then.”

She did not answer. A bit of coal fell in the grate, but Pembroke did not rise to stir the fire up again.

Arabella wondered if she should tell him what had really happened on her wedding day. She wondered what had happened to the letter she had sent. Had he received it? Had he simply ignored it or cast it into the fire? If she could speak of his father, if she could speak of his drinking, she could speak of anything. But she sat frozen, as if she had suddenly fallen mute.

Pembroke reached for the cut glass filled with brandy, but instead of drinking it, he tossed the liquor onto the fire.

The coals flared for a moment, then died down again. All Arabella could hear was the ticking of the clock in the hall and the sound of her own heart beating.

“It doesn’t matter what you say, Arabella. I will never strike you. You know that, don’t you?”

She watched him closely, as a snake might watch its charmer. She stared at him, at the hard contours of his face, at the sky blue of his eyes. “I know that,” she said. “I don’t know why I tried to tempt you.”

He smiled then, and a little of his old light came back into his eyes, if only for a moment. “You meant to test me, before we go any further down the road to Derbyshire. Know this, Arabella, because you no longer know me. I am not my father. I am not yours.”

“I know you, Raymond. Sometimes I think I am the only one who does.”

He laughed at that, and the derision in his voice was worse than a beating, like acid on her skin. “You know nothing about me but the rumors you’ve heard. I am just the fool you left for a rich duke, a boy you never thought of again.”

She wanted to say,
I
did
think
of
you. I do think of you
. But she said nothing, she did not speak of the letters she had sent, swallowing her words as she might swallow poison. It was many years too late to try to make amends now. She saw in the hard planes of his face, all light fled from his eyes, that he would not listen to an apology, even if she knew how to give him one.

He rose to his feet, and she did the same. The fire was beginning to go out.

“It has been a long day, and we have a long day of travel ahead of us tomorrow,” was all he said.

Arabella tried to offer a smile and failed. She spoke some polite nonsense, as she sometimes had as a girl, when she thought to diffuse a bad situation, when she thought to deflect her father’s wrath. “The bed is very fine. A thick quilt and a deep feather mattress. I will be a sight more comfortable than you will be here on this settle.”

Pembroke must have heard the fear beneath her foolish words. He attempted a smile, and though it did not reach his eyes, his attempt was better than hers. “I have slept on worse. You need not concern yourself about me.”

She had reached the end of her strength. She needed the deep peace that only sleep could bring, the one fortress that her father, her husband, even Hawthorne had not been able to breach.

“I bid you good night,” she said. She crossed the room, but something made her turn back at the door. Pembroke was watching her with no hint of lust or anger on his face, without even a hint of old pain. He simply looked tired to the bone, as she was.

“You are safe, Arabella. No matter what we have lost, no matter what once passed between us, you will always be safe with me.”

In spite of the tension of the day just past, Arabella fell at once into a deep sleep. That night, just as she had the night before, she dreamed.

Moonlight filtered in from an unseen window, covering the bedclothes with soft, creamy light. In the dream, she lay in bed in her husband’s house. She knew in the dream that her husband was dead, but in the sleep of night, this was not foul news. She was widowed and free with no specter of Hawthorne looming over her. But as she lay on the feather bed in her husband’s house, she knew that she was not alone.

Pembroke stepped out of the shadows dressed in the same clothes he had worn the night she had first come to him. His black evening clothes blended with the darkness of the room as the moonlight picked up the bright white of his cravat and the gold embroidery on his waistcoat.

He said nothing but moved to stand beside the bed where she lay unmoving, as if caught under a spell. She was not afraid, but the rational part of her mind knew that she must send him away. If she asked him to, Pembroke would go. No matter how dissipated he had become, he would never force himself on any woman.

Though the moonlight was dim, in the dream she could see the deep blue of his eyes. They had always reminded her of a clear summer sky, the color of the sky the summer she fell in love with him. There was no pain between them, no awkwardness. It was as if all of that had been washed away. Pembroke sat beside her on the bed. The feather mattress shifted under his weight so that she was forced to sit up and catch herself or else roll into him.

He did not move to touch her even then.

Arabella leaned close, reaching for him. He caught her hand in his, his great paw closing around her fingers and palm so that they disappeared. Surrounded by his warmth, her hand began to tingle. She leaned closer to him still and took in the scent of cinnamon, the inexplicable sweetness his skin always seemed to bear. Arabella would never have had the courage to do such a thing in waking life, but she knew even as she drew closer to Pembroke that she still dreamed.

She pressed her free hand against his cheek. Beneath her fingertips, his skin was rough where his fair beard had begun to grow back in. She could not see the flush of color come into his face, but she could feel the warmth of it. She scooted closer still and pressed her lips to that same cheek.

His arms came around her then, very carefully, as if she were made of spun glass. He did not jostle or startle her but drew her against his chest, so that she could hear the soft beating of his heart. The heavy feel of his arms around her, of his weight against her, was nothing like her elderly husband’s thin arms and spindly frame. Though she was no longer a maid and had not been a maid for ten years, she felt as if she were a virgin once more, sitting tucked safe in Pembroke’s arms on those soft white sheets.

Though she felt lost and at sea, she was not afraid as she had been on her real wedding night. She was safe, and she knew it, for Pembroke was with her.

“I would like to kiss you, if you will permit me.”

Arabella laughed a little under her breath. He had never sounded so formal in her life, but this was a dream, and she did not want to wake. She savored the feel of his body against hers, warmth beginning to rise between her thighs.

She had never felt such a thing before, not even when she was a girl and happy. Pembroke had only kissed her once that summer, the same afternoon he had given her his mother’s ring. She had been transported by the feel of his lips on hers. It had been so long ago that she could not now remember what it felt like to be kissed by a man she loved, by a man she had chosen.

“Yes,” she said.

Pembroke leaned down then, holding her effortlessly, his strength cradling her as if she were an egg that might crack. His bright blue eyes were on hers, watching her face steadily, in case she might change her mind. She did not move to touch him but waited quietly as his lips descended on hers.

She closed her eyes and felt their feather touch, as light as down, and as soft. She sighed, opening her mouth beneath his, and he pressed his lips against hers, harder this time, as if he might devour her. She gasped at the onslaught, and he drew back a little, as if afraid that he had offended her.

“No,” she said. She took hold of his shoulders and drew him down to her once more. This time it was her lips on his, her mouth that moved beneath him, clumsily but with enthusiasm. Her husband had kissed her only rarely and never well. She had never truly learned for she and Pembroke had been engaged only for one night.

He smiled against her mouth and leaned down again to kiss her in earnest. Pembroke was still careful to draw her out slowly, but his lips moved over hers with such lazy experience, with such sensuous skill that she found almost at once that she had lost her breath.

He instructed her with the motion of his lips until she followed suit and kissed him as he had been kissing her. Then he ran his tongue along the edge of her mouth, sucking on her lower lip until she opened up to him. He plundered her mouth then, and for the first time she felt the ragged edge of his control. The sense of it did not frighten her but made the warmth in her body tighten, its languid heat turning into hunger. She was not certain what she was hungry for, but she knew that Pembroke would sate it.

Arabella gasped, coming fully awake as she heard the maid dropping coal into the grate. She listened as the woman moved about beyond the curtains of her bed, her hand pressed against her chest as if she might stop the erratic beating of her heart.

The dream lived with her, its vivid contours making her blush even as she lay alone, unseen by anyone. Never in her life had she felt such liquid warmth, such seductive heat. She wondered if such a thing was real or if she might find such sensations only in a dream. She shivered as the maid opened the curtains of her bed.

“Good morning, m’am. The gentleman is up already. Do you need help dressing?”

“No, thank you. Just some tea and breakfast brought into the parlor. We will be on the road early this morning.”

“Yes, m’am.” The girl curtseyed, showing no sign of judgment or censure, though no doubt she thought that Pembroke had spent the night in that same bed. Very likely the staff of that inn had seen a great deal where Pembroke was concerned. She wondered if he had ever brought Titania there, if he had ever brought the actress to his home in the country. Jealousy prodded her spleen, and she pushed it away.

She dressed quickly in the gown from the day before, straightening its dark blue muslin into some semblance of order. She drew her hair from its night braid and brushed it out quickly before drawing it into a bun at the nape of her neck. A few stray wisps escaped her pins, but she liked the way they framed her face, so she let them be. She had never been a beauty, not even in the full flush of her youth, but that day, with the heightened color in her cheeks and the hint of freedom on the road before her, Arabella smiled at her reflection and was satisfied.

Before she allowed her traveling bag to be taken downstairs, she reached into the bottom for the box hidden there and took out a small velvet bag. She drew it out carefully, almost reverently. She untied the ribbons that bound it closed and opened her palm to catch the only piece of jewelry inside it.

Though she had been a duchess for ten years, her husband had given her few jewels. Her wedding band still rested on her finger, but the other pieces he had given her, a strand of pearls, a brooch of jet, had all been left behind in London. She did not feel as if they truly belonged to her.

Arabella stared down at the ring that rested in her palm. It was the only piece of jewelry she had ever loved.

The ring Pembroke had given her gleamed gold in the light of the fire. She kept it well polished, so it looked as new as the day he had placed it on her hand.

On her wedding day, she had hidden it away so that her father and her husband would not see it. She drew it out only rarely, for it was a piece of her past that never failed to pierce her heart.

She slipped the ring onto her hand, and its ruby caught the light. She kissed it once, furtively, before drawing it off again. Instead of hiding it in the velvet bag, she drew a ribbon from her hair box, a thin ribbon of light pink silk, a color she had always loved but had never worn. She slipped that ribbon through the ring and tied it fast before drawing it around her neck. The ring lay against her heart, between her small breasts. She pressed it once between her palm and her heartbeat, then slipped it inside her bodice where it would be hidden from all eyes, even her own. The high collar of her gown concealed the ribbon completely.

She knew she must in all honor give the ring back. It had been his mother’s, and no doubt, in spite of his wild ways, Pembroke would marry one day. He would want to give that ring to the bride he had chosen. She could not in good conscience keep it. Once they were at Pembroke House, safe in Derbyshire, she would give it back to him.