Love’s a Stage Read online

  Fighting for breath, Frances collapsed, still wound in his arms, into the sharp, grassy scent of an aged planting of March-come marigolds. Landry was laughing; Frances could feel his hard chest shudder.

  “That wasn’t bad for practice,” he managed between choked bursts of mirth. “We’ll try the real thing tomorrow.”

  “How can you laugh? How can you?” The words bit as they struggled through her flayed throat. “I’ve never been so afraid in all my life!” Her heart was banging painfully against her strained lungs, chastising Frances for squandering her drained energy on speech. The jolt she had received from the balloon’s landing came cresting over her in a stunning aftershock; she lay for a long time as she had fallen, unable to order movement to her limbs or more than a pittance of breath into her lungs. Landry had cushioned her fall neatly with the warm length of his body, while chance had tucked her cheek into his soft linen shirt and thrown one of her legs across his lean thighs. One of her fragile white arms was curled near his shoulder, with her hand resting beside his head. Frances could see the sky above her, pearl-gray and rolling with black-tipped clouds, forever shed of its mysteries. With the lark and the sparrow, she had sailed there.

  The hammering of her excited heart began gradually to lessen, though not slowing to its normal pace. And as her shock wore away, a new and even more powerful weakness came to take its place. Some nagging hum tucked into her mind warned her that she ought to stand up, to move off. Without quite realizing that she was doing so, Frances quieted that wary voice, pleading for just one more minute, I’ll only stay one more minute like this, then I shall get up and it will be over.

  Landry hadn’t spoken since her words, and she wondered what he was thinking and if it might be possible to guess, were she to tilt her head a little and look into his eyes. Her bonnet had fallen loose on its ribbons during their escape from the gondola, so the slight motion of her head brought her deep-brown hair shimmering out to ripple across the upper part of his body.

  Landry had recovered much more quickly than Frances. He was able to smile with luxurious charm into her upturned face. She noticed how the brightness of his hair dulled the marigolds and the green of his eyes outshone the leaves framing his countenance. A spray of pollen had flown into the air as they had fallen on the marigolds, and he saw that it had given a fine dusting to her tawny cheeks and dark eyelashes. He put up his little finger, took some of the clinging pollen onto the side of it, and gently brushed it onto the swell of her lower lip, where it lay, a speckled gold luster against the dusky redness.

  “Marigold mated,” he whispered. She felt a tensing of his arm as he reached out to behead, between his thumb and forefinger, three of the marigold flowers nearest, and her captive gaze followed his hand through the air as he brought them, to slide them ever so gently into the thick wavy hair behind her ear, where they were trapped and firmly held. He shifted her on his arm, turned on his side, and held her close; and reached a hand to arrange her hair in its proper fall across her forehead; then lightly brushed the pollen from her lips with his own.

  Frances knew that she ought not to close her eyes, but she did it anyway. She could feel his deft fingers as they sought and loosened the first of four large fabric-covered buttons that held closed her cloak. He spread the collar to bare her throat, saying huskily that she was anointed. She felt petals softly dropping to touch and lie across her throat and his breath skimming her skin as he blew them off. A thrill of enticing fright shook her as he opened the second button; her soul learned the shy rapture, the feared wonder, of a butterfly emerging for the first time into a fresh and freer world. It was as though the balloon had carried her to a magic isle where old rules and problems no longer existed and she was tied not to the rigid standards that had governed all her life before, but to discovery and joy. Her past became a pale, fading mirage against the insistent reality of Landry’s warm, vibrant presence. Color, scent, texture, and sound were vivid and exaggerated; she could experience them in a way that she had never done before. No, she had been so once before, on the carriage ride when he had brought her home from Chez la Princesse. With the memory, her conscience weakly threw up the attendant self-censure and regret, jogging her vanishing sense of responsibility, reminding her that she ought to stop him. One more minute. Please. Please. She made a compromise and turned her face away from him, knowing as she did it that it was not enough.

  “I wish you would not,” she said in a curiously forceless voice.

  “Do you?” His tone hadn’t changed. She turned her head, opening her eyes to look at him, and saw with a prick of shame that he knew she was lying.

  “We should—I think we ought to”—she spoke to distract herself as much as him—“to look for someone to help us.” How lame her words sounded. “The big house looked as though it had been burnt. Do you think it has been deserted?”

  He gave a light laugh in response, and she felt the thickly bunched head of a marigold as he brushed it against her cheek.

  “I can give you all the help you need,” he said peacefully. The flower slid around to her chin, and was left to rest on her throat as he slipped the third button of her cloak from its nest. “I know where we are. This is Wrenleigh’s estate in southern Suffolk. It’s been deserted since the fire seven years ago. When the Earl was forced to the Continent to escape his creditors, he put a torch to the place to keep it out of their hands. The grand gesture. It was the kind of thing that appealed to him.”

  “What a tragic story! Did you know him?” Her heart still fluttered alarmingly.

  “He was a school friend. I spent a month here the summer I was fourteen.” His hand had moved to her side, where he laid it broadly, fingers spread, stroking underneath her breast. “The story’s not as tragic as you think. Wrenleigh won a fortune at hazard in Naples, and when I visited him last year he was set up in a villa at the edge of town, better fixed than he’d ever been.” He freed the last button of her cloak, and she felt cool air on the base of her neck as he parted the heavy garment and tucked it by her sides. Under the cloak was her blossom-pink robe à l’anglaise, flaring slightly under the high bodice that had been cut on the cross to cling to her full, soft breasts. It was a perfectly respectable garment, but was made to be worn while standing and the material was such that, in her present position, it fiercely accented the lush contours of her body.

  She made a fretful, shaky motion to pull the cloak about her again, but he caught her hand and carried it to his lips.

  “Frances. You worry too much,” he whispered, gazing steadily into her eyes.

  “It would be well for you if I didn’t,” Frances answered him. Her tone was defensive but she was quaking inside, knowing she was too close to the flame. Frances was reminded once more of the kiss he had given her in the carriage after they had left Chez la Princesse. If he had wanted her then, could she have resisted him? Could she resist him now?

  He kissed her fingertips one by one and gently took the tip of her middle finger between his teeth. “It would be well for you if you didn’t. All this self-denial will give you a migraine.”

  “What you want is sinful.” Her voice shook slightly.

  He gently opened the palm of her captured hand and moved his fingernails from her wrist upward, lazily but firmly, leaving white trails on her flesh that changed to red as the blood rushed to the surface once his nails had passed. His fingers seemed to be reaching a destination as they pushed smoothly through her tightly clasped hand and wound them, tendrillike, through. He carried their entwined hands to his lips and gently nibbled her knuckles. His head was tilted to the side, his golden hair falling over her outspread brown curls.

  “Does it feel like sin when I kiss you?” he asked.

  She was visibly discomposed. “Yes! Yes, it does! It feels too good not to be!”

  “And pleasure is wrong?” He dipped their paired hands to her mouth and moved them round the curvature of her lips, which relaxed and parted involuntarily, then snapped closed as she
caught herself, biting her lower lip in her small white teeth. “Why do you think you have those feelings? Only to gauge how well you can resist temptation? To punish yourself?”

  Her cheeks heated; Frances drooped her long, pretty eyelashes and turned her head. In a voice ruffled with shame, she said, “I shouldn’t have those feelings for you.”

  He was amused again. “It’s pitiful what they teach women in this country. Frances, poor child, what do you think it means? Young girls sighing over lending-library romances, or giggling when the squire’s handsome son waves at them on the village green? Why do you think men and women dance together, and write love letters, and stand half-naked statues in their gardens? It’s a part of the same appetite—of course you should feel it, too; that’s the way we’re all made.”

  “That’s exactly the kind of thing one would expect a rake to say.” Frances tried to prevent her voice from trembling.

  Landry grinned. “At least I’ve taught you something.” He trailed a finger down her cheek. “I’ve never seduced an innocent girl. And I’m glad you’re so clever. It keeps me from feeling guilty. But I think I’ve told you that before.”

  “Something like that,” she agreed, torn with anger, fright, and desire.

  A blue-white flash of lightning split the sky to shatter against a high corner of the hulking manor, joined by the crackling scream of a thunderclap. Frances jumped as though she’d been shot.

  “It was only lightning,” he said, holding her close, his hand straying comfortingly through her curls. Three fat raindrops fell heavily nearby, and a cool wind swept the hills, bringing with it a deluge. He pulled her from the rapidly soddening ground and held her while he peered through the enveloping sheet of water for shelter. There was a path of gray stone nearby, and he led her to it, covering her head with her bonnet. A second lightning bolt struck an elm on the slope behind the manor.

  “It’s God’s reproach for your want of principle,” she said with the wavery trace of a smile. Raindrops lay like crystal beads on her skin, leaving her cheeks fresh and dewy.

  “How do you know it’s a reproach? Perhaps it’s an endorsement,” he answered.

  “Of all the base, impious . . .” Doubtless he couldn’t hear her words over the drone of the splashing rain and the smack of their feet on the graveled walk. Landry propelled Frances up the lichen-covered steps of broken stone that led to a wide upper terrace collaring the great house. More than a century had passed since the second Countess of Wrenleigh had extravagantly caused the terrace to be bedded in chips of snow-white marble and hired a small army of youngsters from neighboring farms to combat the subversive encroachment of weeds. The democratic hand of time had overthrown the tyranny of the terrace’s chaste whiteness; a plebeian assault of scrubby dandelions and groundsel had surged through the stones like a smug family of ragged squatters.

  The mansion hung over them, dead and heavy, as they rounded the corner of one charred wing. Landry turned away from the house. Leaving the stones and pulling Frances behind him by one hand, he crossed a rectangle of scraggling, sick greenery to a high brickwork wall. Frances felt her feet sinking into the rich loam of what must once have been an exquisite plantation of expensive annuals. Her toe came up unexpectedly under a sinewy stone arm grotesquely severed from a nearby Heracles, and she cried out and stumbled. There was no slackening of Landry’s long strides, and Frances reflected with some umbrage that she would probably be pulled face first in the mud.

  “Are we running toward somewhere?” Frances yelled to be heard over the rain. “Or are we just running?”

  Through a speech-obliterating clap of thunder, she heard him say something about “the old stable” and “might still have a roof on it.” They reached a wicket gate bare of paint and welded shut by rust. Lord Landry tried it unsuccessfully, then drew up his knee and kicked the gate from its hinges. The gate fell hard, nearly disappearing in a thick mat of dried grass.

  “You’re certainly devil-may-care with other people’s property,” shouted Frances as they passed through.

  He gave her a look of mock reproach. “And I thought you would be so impressed with my swashbuckling heroics.” They entered a wide eroded yard, crisscrossed with deep wheel ruts filling with water. Frances saw an old stable mushrooming ahead through a steamy mist thrown into the air by the collision of rain and earth. It was barnlike and timbered, with a sturdy stone-tile roof. Spouts of muddy water sprang from beneath their feet as they headed for the black square of the open doorway.

  They stepped inside as a white flash of lightning lit the interior. Visible in eerie relief were two long rows of oak roof-support posts stretching into the darkness like a long church nave and lined with piles of straw stored perhaps by local farmers. The lightning’s flicker outlined the narrow eyelets cut at intervals into the wall to admit light and fresh air. The rain drummed with a metallic echo on the stone tiles above them.

  Soaked, bedraggled, her cloak a wet slab on her back, and her loose brown hair hanging heavy and cold on her shoulders, Frances’ only warmth was in the hand Lord Landry held. He turned to face her, his hair curling from the rain, and raised his free hand to drag off her bonnet and toss it on the straw. His expression was tranquil, and yet to Frances compelling; she could neither speak nor tear her gaze from his face as he slid his hands under the cape covering her shoulders and sent the garment falling around her ankles. A sudden chill took her, and a whisper of fear. Her feet caught in the sticky wet folds of her cloak as she backed from him, wide-eyed, shaking her head.

  “No. No.” Frances found the sound of her voice jarring in the sweet-smelling serenity of the stable and the lulling thud of the rain. Then there came a damp breeze flooding through the doorway and a fresh clatter of falling water. Frances crossed her arms, hugging herself pathetically. “I’m cold,” she said.

  “Frances, you’re not yourself.” He was smiling, but made no move to approach her. “You ought to know better than to give me an opening like that.”

  “I hope you valued it, because that’s the last opening you’ll have from me!” she said meaningfully. She stepped back further, desperate to widen the distance between them. Her skirts and petticoats clung like a phantom skin over each graceful curve and swell, hobbling her; she lost her balance and fell to her knees on a pillowing foothill of the straw stack. He came to her, kneeling, and drew her tightly to his body, entwining his arms about her shoulders, pulling aside the damp curls. His lips singed the bare skin on the side of her neck, searing a path to her earlobe.

  She tried to pull from him, but the heat of his nearness was overpowering, and the pulling away turned into a helpless throat baring, and the hands that she put up to push him back instead weakly clung to him. His lips worked their way from her ear down her delicate jawline, and when their lips finally touched, she could only drink in his deep kisses as though they were her breath of life. Sweetly they tasted one another; he held her so closely to him that her body ached with the contact and her tense muscles began involuntarily to yield. Her world was damp and warm, shivering with pleasure’s fever. In the vast bursts of lightning her gaze found the sensual line of his mouth, the fine eyes gentled with passion, as she lifted her hands to lay them on either side of his face. She heard him say her name and after each kiss whisper the delight she gave him. His lips parted hers farther, tenderly probing her shy mysteries and filling her with an exquisite, anguished longing so potent that she wished to open every pore of her body and have him flow inside until each empty cell overran.

  His mouth took hers again and again as he raised her body and with one competent hand brought freedom to the hook-and-eye fastenings at her back. Her gown fell, baring her shoulders, and he laid her back on the straw, carefully spreading her flowing, rain-perfumed hair. Her breasts were soft and swollen beneath the damp fabric of her bodice, and Frances watched his face with fearful wonder as he eased the gown lower. Modesty suddenly intruded. She could look at him no more. A hard shiver ran the length of her spi
ne as she pressed her eyes shut tightly. Beside her she felt him stir, then lift her hand and carry it to her breast. Uncurling her stiff fingers, he touched them gently against the blossom of her own fullness.

  “You’re soft as a rose petal, sweet,” he said in a quiet voice so near and intimate that she might have made the thought herself. His lips found her tingling palms and then brushed feather-light over the tips of her breasts. A half-suppressed moan burned her throat; she arched her throbbing shoulders, fretful and confused. And when his mouth came again to her, she whispered “yes” when she had meant to tell him that he must stop.

  With mindless innocence, she pressed against him, wanting to feel every inch of him through the clinging wetness of their clothes. They had been side by side, and she did not stop him as he pushed himself gently on top of her and kneaded her shoulders with strong hands as she fiercely fought him for more . . . deeper . . . wetter . . . her body tortured by the onslaught of new sensation.

  Had she been any woman, Landry would have been careful of her needs; it was his nature to be so. But with Frances, he was careful and something more. Fine-tuning to the fragile soul of his virginal lover, he held back with tender patience, deferring his more sophisticated desires to lovemaking consistent with her inexperience. Checking his ardor to her slower pace, he made sure she had the time she needed under the refined luxury of his guiding hands. Later, he would reflect that he could not have gone about it any other way, even if he had fully known the price. If he had taken her at once in the white-hot giddiness of her early passion, she might have been too confused to stop him. Instead, he had waited for the blooming of her participation and the full and knowing maturity of her willingness. While Frances had long passed rational thought, she owned an inhibition stronger than the paradise she found in Landry’s arms. Infallible, unquestioned, was the conviction that the intimacy of her love must be given only to the man she would marry. Without triumph, without criticism, she accepted the tenet. The feelings she had for Landry seemed as immense as the heavens, but he had made plain to Frances the quality of his commitment, so that her trust for him was weaker than her faith in the dogmas of her childhood.