Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
If you ever have the opportunity to listen to howling wolves, ignore everything you’ve read about slavering beasts. Think of them as gossiping old ladies.
Iwent to bed with the fireplace poker.
If Burnsby entered my room, I planned to slash my husband’s weaker leg out from under him. The poker was made from wrought iron and would deal a stout blow. Sitting propped up against the headboard, I practiced swinging it through the air.
Time went by slowly. Sometime around midnight, a groom outside began shoveling snow in the colonnade, humming tunelessly to himself.
Burnsby was surely in bed. He religiously protected his sleep, once leaving a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream before the fifth act because he feared traffic would disturb his bedtime.
We weren’t married at that point; why hadn’t I seen his lack of consideration for my wishes as a warning sign?
I hadn’t wanted to leave the performance, but he hadn’t asked for my opinion—he just announced that we were leaving.
I had to stop blaming myself. I wasn’t a fool. I was a woman who married the wrong man: to wit, the villain. That woman might well slay the villain if he entered her room with violence in mind.
The thought was very pleasant. I practiced a few more slashing movements with the poker.
Earlier the six of us—myself, Godric, Ophelia, Mima, Colette, and Lancelot—had eaten our evening meal in the library, while Crumpsall served a six-course meal to Burnsby and Sophonisba in solitary splendor.
Ophelia had peeked into the dining room and reported a staggering array of silver platters, silver candelabra, and silver tableware.
I was drowsily thinking about how pleasant the meal had been when a wolf howled in the distance. I sat upright. Its voice rose, fell, and rose again. Another answered, low and mournful.
When my favorite novelists write about wolves howling in the night, they describe wild animals whose bloody fangs shine in the moonlight. More poetically, Shakespeare labels that famous rapist, Tarquin, as a wolf coming to Lucrece’s bed with “ravishing strides.”
I had seen the implacable, cold calculation of a wild animal in Burnsby’s eyes. I took in a quick breath and reminded myself that his limp made “ravishing strides” an impossibility.
Still: The real wolf was within the gates, inside the abbey.
Outside, animals howled again, answering one another. They sounded like scandalized ladies blathering over cups of tea.
I was waiting for it—expecting it—but nonetheless the rattle of my door opening sent a bolt of shock down my body. I threw back my covers and leaped from my bed.
Burnsby was no Tarquin. In the flickering light of the fireplace, his hair blazed white, his chin disappeared altogether, and his back rounded over his cane.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, keeping my voice low. I didn’t want Godric to play the hero and burst through the adjoining door. I could handle this.
(Though obviously I was glad to have a reserve army at my call.)
“I’ve come for my marital rights,” Burnsby said.
My heart was beating fast, but I told myself that I was in control of the encounter. I pitched my voice to a scathing knife’s edge. “When you raped Hecuba, you were young and fit. Younger and fitter.”
“How dare you accuse me of such a vile—”
“Because you are vile,” I said, interrupting. “You committed the crime. How dare you refuse the vice?”
“You have lost your mind,” he said, looking shaken. “God forgive me, I married a madwoman.”
“You’re a rapist, Burnsby. You did so in the past, and you have come to my bedroom for that purpose.”
“Nonsense. A husband and wife are of one body,” my husband explained, with the unblinking air of virtue he wore so well.
To my right, the tapestry concealing the door to Godric’s bedchamber shivered as if a breeze had lifted it slightly.
I raised the poker between myself and Burnsby, keeping my distance.
“This implement is solid,” I remarked. “One blow would shatter your cane, toppling you to the floor. Don’t imagine that I’ll summon Crumpsall to help you.
You would be unable to reach the bell cord, so you would have to crawl through the door and into the snow to reach your bedchamber. ”
“I was much mistaken in you,” my husband rasped. “Does your conscience not reproach you for this despicable defiance, this unchristian mutiny?”
My bloodthirstiness shocked him, though he’d entered my chamber with violent intentions?
(I could scarcely believe it, but the man considered himself sinless.)
“No,” I said. I slashed the poker through the air to encourage him to leave. Burnsby fell back a step. “Out the door. Unless you wish to crawl.”
His cane was visibly shaking in his palsied clutch. “You are perverse, a woman who transgresses the sins of your sex.”
“Luckily for you, I will be seeking a divorce,” I said, forcing myself to sound amused.
“Godric assures me that my case for annulment is sound, in light of the lack of children in your last marriage, not to mention your long and childless relationship with Miss Ainsworth. Though perhaps her children were discarded like stray puppies?”
A wild look crossed his face; if he had been at full strength, I would have found myself grappling with him on the bed, fighting for my very life.
Yet the ferocity in his eyes quickly waned with acknowledgment of his physical weakness. He turned, barely catching his weight on the cane as he reached for the latch.
I watched him leave from a safe distance and then used the poker to slam the door closed.
“Genevieve?”
I startled and turned around. “Did Burnsby wake you?”
Godric shoved the tapestry to the side and walked into my room. “Yes.” His eyes rested on the poker. “I wondered about your weapon.”
I set it to the side. My body was consumed by a burning wave of triumph. Should the occasion rise—in other words, if Burnsby or a wolf attacked me—I could trust myself to be thoroughly unladylike, even aggressive.
“You were right about his intentions,” I said.
“Keeping silent just now was one of the hardest things I have done. Would you have preferred me to intervene?”
“Definitely not.” I collapsed into a chair and gave him a thankful smile. “I protected myself. I do believe that Burnsby felt powerless.” I paused, stunned by that fact.
“Your defiance terrified him. He’s a coward at heart.” Godric examined my face. “You are no longer afraid of him,” he said, as if reassuring himself.
“No,” I admitted. A maidenly maiden would still be petrified, but I have always faked genteel emotions.
“Even if I don’t have a poker at hand, I can defend myself against him.
It was a matter of convincing myself that a lady is not a fragile and breakable reed.
” I narrowed my eyes. “Actually, I’d welcome a chance to revenge Hecuba. ”
Godric made a sound in the back of his throat, a hoarse noise that sounded like desire. Or admiration. Or affection. Or tenderness. I could think of all sorts of ways to explain it, though none to explain why the sound made my legs melt and a flush burn up my cheeks.
Hopefully the room was too dim for him to see.
“You are—” He caught himself.
“Bloodthirsty, as my husband described,” I said cheerfully. “Will you defend me in court on charges of homicide, if required?”
“I will always defend you.” The words hung in the air between us. “No matter how brave or homicidal you are, Genevieve, I’d prefer that you weren’t alone in your bedchamber unless I’m next door. Just in case.”
“I have my poker.”
“Your courage is exemplary. But please avoid being alone in this room unless I’m next door.”
“All right,” I agreed, because I heard strain in his voice. “He won’t come back tonight—or ever, in my estimation. My husband would be humiliated if the household knew his wife had kicked him from her room like a stray dog.”
“Burnsby doesn’t give a damn about his servants’ opinions,” Godric said, shaking his head. “Sophonisba is proof of that.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed.
Godric walked over and threw another log on my fire, revealing that he was wearing the same breeches he’d had on earlier in the evening, along with his shirt and cravat, but no coat.
“Would you like to join me?” I asked, gesturing toward the other chair.
We sat in silence. I was sorting through the experience in my mind, trying to calm my thumping heart.
“Most of the time I have no idea what you’re thinking about,” Godric said, sometime later.
“I’m not as proper as I pretend to be,” I admitted.
The new log caught, and the fire leapt, making his nose look like a blade and his jaw as strong as if it had been cut from volcanic rock.
I didn’t want to lie to him. “I often act a part.”
“So I have come to understand.”
I cleared my throat. I’d be damned if I apologized. “You already know that I think about architecture in ballrooms.”
“I suspect that any lady of your stamp would be forced to dissimulate in order to survive polite society.”
“A lady of any stamp,” I corrected. “Ladies are required to be ladylike. From the moment we memorize the script, we all begin feigning, some more than others.”
He nodded.
I was aware of him in a way I’d never experienced before. My stomach curled into a knot. A lustful knot. A hot, intense, dangerous knot.
“Earlier, those howling wolves sounded outraged, like gossips complaining that a lady had breached propriety,” I said hastily.
Godric ignored my digression. “I wish I had your composure. I lose my temper in the courtroom and spew hostility, as Mima described. I’m no good at lying.”
Sir Godric Everley had a gruff expression, in the normal course of things. He didn’t smile. He judged. Yet now his voice had a vulnerable note.
“Why would you wish to lie?” I asked. “I only do it because I must, because society demands it.”
His brow knit, his expression even more surly than normal. “You do not have to.”
Grumpy—and ignorant.
“Ladies are not allowed to have a temper,” I said, gazing down at my hands because it made me feel peculiar to meet his eyes. “If I were an attorney, I might be like you. Perhaps. But in that case, I would be a man.”
I didn’t lean toward him, but he bent toward me, until we were almost touching. “You’d be angry, like me,” he continued. “I can’t wield a poker in court, but at times I wish I could.”
“Perhaps,” I said, thinking that it would be fun to shout at criminals. But I was also thinking about his lips. He often pressed them together, but other times—like now—his bottom lip was sensual and plump.
“Do you suppose that you could be truthful with me, in private?” he asked. “I find myself longing to know what you’re thinking. I may be growing obsessed.”
I blinked. “You are?”
He nodded, regarding me steadily. “You resemble a china doll, Genevieve, but inside you’re a tornado.”
Tornado? “Well, all you need is a long beard, and you’d look like a minor prophet,” I retorted.
“Prophet?”
“Judgmental, surly, superior.” I paused. “Disparaging, disapproving, disagreeable.”
“Am I to understand that you stand around ballrooms looking ravishingly soft and pretty, but inside, you’re thinking up alliterative insults?”
“Sometimes. Why would you want to know when or if I’m daydreaming about architecture?”
(Yes, I sounded disbelieving.)
“You think you’re boring,” Godric said, distinctly amused. “You’re the least boring woman I have met in my entire life.”
My mouth fell open, inelegantly. He grinned at me with a hint of smugness before he stood up and walked to the connecting door.
Godric’s bottom lip had curved into a smile that made my heart pound. Hopefully he didn’t catch the raw desire that pulsed through my body.
The wolves kept howling, but as I snuggled under the covers, my trusty poker tucked beside me, they sounded like friends.
Gossiping friends.