Chapter 10 #3
She was not comfortable as she led her pupil into the drawing room later.
Lord Thomas Kent had once been Matthew’s friend.
He could not possibly know her, of course.
But his presence at Willoughby was a strong reminder of that constant threat to her security and happiness.
She stood inside the door, her eyes lowered, and hoped that no one would feel it necessary to take notice of her.
She hoped that Lady Pamela would not be kept long.
The child was very excited and very tired.
She raised her eyes as the duchess led her daughter across the room, and looked at Lord Thomas Kent.
He was the duke’s half-brother, she knew.
But anyone could have mistaken them for full brothers.
They were remarkably alike except that Lord Thomas was not quite as tall or his face quite so hawkish and severe in its expression. He smiled and was very handsome.
She glanced at the duke to note the contrast between the two and found him watching his brother talk to Lady Pamela with that dark expression that was so characteristic of him. She shivered. How could two men look so much alike and yet so very different?
And her eyes strayed beyond his grace’s shoulder to another gentleman, shorter too than the duke, fair-haired, inclined to stockiness. He was looking very directly at her, a gleam of—what?—pleasure? amusement? triumph? in his eyes.
She looked down hastily at the carpet between her feet and felt her heart and every pulse pump the blood painfully through her body.
The room about her, the loud buzz of voices and laughter, the reason she was there—all fled from her consciousness, and she was aware only of a strawberry-red rose in the pattern of the carpet.
It had a dark green stem and brown thorns.
There was no air in the room. Her hands felt thick and vibrating, as if the blood could not force its way through them. She was losing control of her hands. There was no air to breathe.
There was a door next to her. She reached out a hand to turn the knob, could not find it, bumped her knuckles against it, grasped it, could not control it, and then blessedly jerked the door open.
She fled along the hallway, hesitated when she reached the staircase, fled into the great hall, wrenched open one of the front doors without so much as glancing at the footmen, and fled down the horseshoe steps.
Fresh air. And darkness. And space.
She ran.
She was among the lime trees when pain and breathlessness forced her to stop. She grasped a tree trunk with both hands as the breath sobbed into her lungs, and she doubled up against the pain in her side.
God. Oh, please, dear God, let it not be so. Please, God.
Matthew. He had found her. He had come to take her away.
She stumbled slowly on. When had he come? Why had she not been summoned and arrested immediately? Why had everyone in the drawing room not turned to stare accusingly at her when she brought Lady Pamela in? What sort of a waiting game was he playing?
She leaned against another tree trunk, her cheek against its rough bark, and hugged it with her arms.
What would happen? Would he take her back alone, or would there be someone else to guard her? Would she be bound? Chained? She had no idea how such things were done. How long would she be in prison before being brought to trial? How long would she be in prison after the trial before …?
Oh, please, dear God. Please, dear God.
There was no point in running any farther. He had tracked her this far. There would be no further escape. There was no point in running.
She stood where she was for a long time before pushing wearily away from the tree and making her slow way back to the bridge. And she stood leaning against the parapet, looking sightlessly down at the moonlit cascades, and listening without hearing to the rushing and splashing of water.
She knew for several minutes that there was someone coming, though she did not turn her head to look.
Matthew. It would be Matthew. Expecting that she would fight him again?
Try to run again? She wondered that he was coming alone.
He had not been alone the last time. She had killed his companion then.
Or perhaps he had seen from her face in the drawing room that there was no fight left in her. She was tired of fighting, tired of running. Tired of living.
He stopped at the end of the bridge.
“What is it?” he asked her.
It was not Matthew after all. It was him.
The thought crossed her mind that under almost any other circumstances she would have been terrified, as she had been two nights before—alone with him like this in the night, far from the house.
But there was no point in feeling terror.
Only the one inevitable end could hold terror for her any longer.
“Nothing,” she said. “I wanted some air.”
“And abandoned Pamela in the drawing room?” he said.
She turned her head to look at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not think.”
“What is it?” he asked again. “Was it my brother? Do you know him?”
“No,” she said.
“Lord Brocklehurst, then?”
“No.”
He walked slowly along the bridge toward her. “Was either of them a customer of yours?” he asked.
“No!” Her eyes widened in horror.
“I am the only man to be feared in that particular way, then, am I?” he asked.
She turned away to look down into the foaming water.
“Was it me, then?” he said. “Am I the one you were afraid of? Were you afraid that I would maneuver just such a meeting as this? Were you afraid of a repeat of two nights ago?”
“I was not afraid,” she said. “I was just weary and faint. I needed air.”
He leaned an elbow on the parapet beside her and stood looking at her. “You are such a mystery,” he said softly. “I do not know you at all, Miss Hamilton, do I?”
Her chest was tight with pain. “You don’t need to know me, your grace,” she said, and could hear her voice shaking. “I was your whore and now I am your daughter’s governess. You do not need to know me in either capacity. I merely exist to provide a service to you.”
“I wish you could know that I am not your enemy,” he said. “I think you need a friend.”
“Men do not make friends with their whores and servants,” she said.
“If you are a whore,” he said, “I am an adulterer. We are equal sinners. But you at least had good reason for doing what you did. For one night you were a whore. Don’t let it blight your whole life. You survived. That is what matters.”
“Yes,” she said bitterly, “survival is everything.”
She felt his fingertips resting lightly against the back of her hand on the parapet. Revulsion sizzled up her arm and into her throat. Her first impulse was to snatch away her hand and back away from him. But she was so alone, so much without hope, so utterly in the grip of despair.
She kept her hand where it was, though she knew that it was trembling beneath his fingers.
She wished it were anyone but him. She wished she could take the two steps that separated them and lay her body against his, her head against his broad chest. Oh, she wished it and despised her weakness.
She had always stood alone, ever since the death of her parents and her realization that she was not wanted by the strangers who had come to live in their home.
She had always been proudly independent and had never allowed self-pity to destroy any chance of happiness that she might have.
She wanted Daniel. She closed her eyes.
His fingers slid across her hand and curled beneath hers.
He held her hand in a warm clasp—with those long fingers that had touched her and held her.
She could not prevent her deep shudder, and yet she did not pull away.
She leaned against the parapet and kept her eyes closed as she had when they had waltzed together.
And he lifted her hand until she felt his lips, warm and still, against the back of it.
God. Oh, dear God.
After a few moments he turned her hand and held her palm, first against his mouth and then against his cheek—the unscarred cheek.
“I know that I am the last person in the world to be able to comfort you,” he said. “I know that what I did to you and my appearance make me deeply revolting to you. But if it ever comes to that, Fleur, if there is ever no one else to whom you can turn, then come to me. Will you?”
“I can stand alone,” she said. “I always have.”
“Have you?” he said. “Ever since the death of your parents when you were eight?”
She was silent. And aching with the sound of her name, the first time anyone had called her Fleur since her parents.
“Come back to the house,” he said. “You are cold.”
“Yes,” she said.
And she allowed him to draw her hand through his arm and lead her slowly and silently on the long walk back.
And she wished and wished he were someone different.
She longed to lay her head against the broad shoulder beside it, to turn into his arms, to beg him not to leave her alone that night—her last night of freedom. If only he were Daniel.
And she thought with bleak humor of how Daniel would react to such an invitation. He would be shocked and hurt and sorrowful.
The duke stopped when they reached the upper terrace, at the foot of the horseshoe steps.
“I meant what I said,” he said, one hand over hers as it rested on his arm. “I was angry at my own weakness that night, Fleur, and I used you crudely and cruelly. I have much to atone for. I would like to do you a kindness.”
“You already have,” she said. “You fed me and paid me more than I had earned, and you gave me this post.”
He said no more, but only searched her eyes with his for a long silent moment in the darkness until she felt terror welling in her again.
But she remembered the greater terror facing her inside the house and drew herself free of his grace in order to climb the steps unassisted.
She hoped she would not be chained, she thought, and began to run.
She hoped she would not be carried or dragged from this house the next day in chains. And she hoped …
She opened one of the doors herself without waiting for the duke to come up beside her. And she fled across the great hall and through the archway to the staircase as if all the hounds of hell were in pursuit of her.