Love’s a Stage Read online

  He would have loved her there in the warm straw, but as his fingers spread their heady magic beneath her breasts and lower, a gust of agony blew cool against the tide of her flaming blood. Her pulse surged, one beat hot, one cold, one hot, in an awkward chill as she tried with desperate haste to muster her surrendering strength. Her palms left his back to shove his chest and, in a voice she scarcely knew as her own, she whispered:

  “You mustn’t . . . I don’t want . . .”

  Landry had seemed to her so involved that she had anticipated a lengthy battle to gain his attention. He responded so rapidly that she felt a start of shock.

  “What is it, love? You’re afraid?”

  Her breath came in tattered gasps, and her eyes pleaded for his compassion. “Yes—but not that only. I can’t—you must know I can’t. You were wrong—wrong to start this.”

  “I? Has it been all me, then, Frances?” His voice was gentle, but there was a curious trace of—what? Bitterness? No, it was more temperate than that and more subtle. She couldn’t have hurt him; it was impossible that she would have that much power. He was the only man who had brought her to these forbidden twilight realms, but to him she was merely one in many. Other women had shared, would share in the future, the same clever hands, the same expert lips. How small an effort for him to bring her, like all his others, to this silly joyous heaven, the better to plunder their flimsy charms and slake, for the moment, the boredom of his complex, questing intellect. The thought nagged her temper like a biting fly.

  His words were too disturbing to be answered directly.

  “I should like to get up,” she said in a tight, cold voice that reflected nothing of her bruised heart. The hard, hot comfort of his body pressed to hers was still igniting the tempest within her and the hands she had bravely lodged against his chest had caught his shirt and clung. The faint, cloudy light filtering through a high eyelet slash lent silvery highlights to his profile, and as she watched him, instinct was the only sense that warned her of the stronger emotions veiled beneath the seemingly relaxed detachment that had suddenly occupied his features.

  His fingers spread slowly over her breast, her erratic, jumping heart. “Your tongue has a language different from your body.”

  Shame that she was to be had with such ease took hold in her soul and gave her the courage to move sharply, as though to roll away. He stopped her by catching her wrists in a relentless grip and carrying them to the straw on either side of her head. His mouth met hers in a brief, sensuous caress.

  “I wonder . . .” he mused dispassionately, “if we might be happier if I took the decision out of your hands.”

  When Landry picked up arms, he chose his weapons well. Frances cried out piteously, as though she had been struck.

  “Would you force me, David?”

  If her words moved him, he gave no sign. “We both know, don’t we, sweeting, how little force you’d need.”

  Salty tears began to burn in Frances’ eyes. “I know I shouldn’t have let you believe that I would—” She couldn’t say the word. “I—I en-encouraged you, but . . . I couldn’t help it.”

  “Did it occur to you that you might ask yourself why? What we feel together is real, and not your mewling protests!” Odd that such biting words could be spoken so gently.

  Virtue and ardor were so garbled in Frances’ mind that they began to seem as meaningless as the storm’s patternless staccato. It seemed tragic to stop, tragic not to; it was the loss of his half-mocking, effortless affection that hurt her most deeply. Never before had she admitted to herself how dear that had become to her, or that she might be willing to do so much to gain it back. Would the world be forever bleak after “no” and “I can’t”? She turned her head to the side, into the cold pile of her hair, rejecting her unhappy choices.

  He gave her no time to cower. Shackling both her wrists under one hand, he brought the other to catch her chin, jerking her face toward his. There was no option for her then. She must commit herself to one thing, or to the other; and she had already thrown her lot with chastity.

  Landry watched sardonically as she fought his implacable grip. Then he said, “Far be it from me to shatter any of your fondly nourished illusions, but in the interest of fostering an advance in your immature understanding of physical contact, I think I ought to point out that writhing around beneath me like that is not doing anything to lessen my desire.”

  “Oh! How dare you!” Stung by this new injustice, Frances’ wildly flailing emotions veered into a bright, healthy anger. “You know I am trying to free myself!”

  Frances was released with disconcerting swiftness, a burning cold stinging her where Landry’s body had been. His crisp movement was a paradox with his expression, which had become abstracted, almost preoccupied, like a man who has suddenly remembered an appointment he must keep across town in half an hour. Finally he stood and asked her:

  “When I’m not touching you, does it make you free?”

  She lifted her head to see him moving like a shadow toward the door of the stable.

  “David?” The word burst from her.

  He stopped, but it was a moment before he spoke. “I’m not deserting you. I have to find a place where we can get warm. Wait here.”

  Then she was alone in tomb-quiet, save the intermittent drumming of the rain and the tiny flicker of a sound as a mouse scuttled toward its nest in a far corner. As she waited, the last of the light deserted her, and the tall rectangle of the doorway glowed eerily blue, surrounded by black. Ancient horsey smells arose from the cobbled floor beneath her and mingled with the odor of damp and straw. Draughts surrounded her, and desolation, They were the loneliest minutes of her life.

  Landry did return as he had promised, but after so long a time that she had begun to fear he had, indeed, left her. He came through the doorway and stood over her, silently extending his hand. She didn’t take it, struggling to stand in the clammy wetness of her gown. Her eyes had become accustomed to the dark enough for her to see him find her mantle and bonnet and drape them over his arm as he led the way from the stable. Faint starlight filtered through a break in the clouds as she followed Landry along the outside of the building. Tiny blisters rose on black puddles in the yard as they were struck by the dying rain, but Frances and Landry were protected by the overhanging eave. Over his shoulder, Landry said casually:

  “And you were the one who didn’t believe in bodily electricity.”

  They reached an open stairway, which Landry mounted, his boots echoing on the wooden slats as he climbed. She made no move to follow him, and he turned.

  “The coachman’s quarters. It’s not perfectly pristine, mind you, but at least horses haven’t been living in it for two hundred years. And I’ve made a fire.”

  Frances hung back with her icy hand laid on the stairwell. “Before you left the stable—you said—you threatened . . .”

  He clattered back down the stairs toward her, and she felt his hand warm on her own as he embraced her for a quick second and then released her completely. “There—you see? I’m a reformed character. I’ve made myself busy long enough to erode the nasty wash of temper. Lesson one hundred and thirty-six: Don’t take seriously anything a man says when he’s lying on top of you. Did you really think I was going to ravish you? Things said in anger . . .” She saw him shrug in the darkness. “Don’t let it distress you; no doubt I came by my just deserts. Come up with me.”

  He began to climb, and when she hesitated still, he turned back and with a note of laughter in his voice said, “Besides, I’ve seen to it that we’re to be adequately chaperoned. I have a very respectable missus and her husband in attendance upstairs. Come up and greet them.”

  She decided to follow him, with trepidation and curiosity. Once they had reached the top of the stairs, she noticed that the lock to the door had been smashed, but instead of calling Landry to account for his disrespect for the property of others, she peered nervously around the corner.

  Before her was
a small sitting room with a motley scatter of elderly furnishings much the worse for wear and a broad stone-linteled fireplace bright with a cheerfully crackling blaze. Before it sat the two blackfaced sheep, chewing dreamily on the moth-bitten remains of a green carpet.

  What remained of the evening was fortunately not so hideous as Frances had earlier pictured in her imagination, for which Landry’s cheerful control was much responsible. Nothing could have been more ingenious than the provisions he had made for her comfort. He had explored the other buildings in the home farm; the local tenant farmers were apparently using the buildings for storage, and he was lucky enough to find a cache of root vegetables, apples, and cider, and made for them a passable meal of boiled potatoes and cider hot in the jug, consumed while kneeling in front of the small homey hearth; the potatoes were eaten with their fingers and the cider drunk from the jug, swapped back and forth in turns. The adventure seemed to appeal to Landry’s sense of humor. He took their situation in such good part that a casual bystander would have been pardoned for thinking that the excursion had been deliberately arranged for his entertainment. Here was no citified dandy at a loss without his valet and butler!

  To anyone unacquainted with Frances, it might have seemed odd that the kinder Lord Landry was to her, the more withdrawn and monosyllabic she became. His goodness to her began, quite unaccountably, to pile in her mind. Not only had he helped her when she had first arrived in London, he had rescued her from Chez la Princesse and, without a single question, gotten her a part in the Drury Lane Theatre. Perhaps these hadn’t entailed any special effort on his part, but what of his timely dispatch of Mr. St. Pips at the card tables? Perhaps his many chivalries had not been devoid of self-interest, but then, he had never made the slightest attempt to deceive her on that score. It was inevitable that Frances should begin to draw parallels with her ungrateful and dishonest conduct in their relationship, in one breath condemning his kisses and in the next responding to them like a tulip trying to cup the dew. A timid self-query as to why his kisses filled her with such heady sensations had only a single, irrefutable answer: Frances Atherton, parson’s daughter, was in love with the renowned Lord Landry. It seemed incredible, but there it was. She wasn’t sure where she had erred, or how she could have been so stupid as to have let it happen. If only she could go back to her first day in London and avoid any action that might lead to their acquaintance—but what good was hindsight? Two months ago she might have scoffed at the plight of a lovelorn miss languishing over a handsome rake. Now she was wiser. Folly on folly, and it was all hopeless, too. To her, love must only mean marriage, while he had made it clear that it meant the opposite to him.

  For a long time after their gypsy’s dinner she sat quietly staring into the fire, heartsore. She wasn’t sure later when she had closed her eyes. When she opened them again it was later, much later. The fire was low and she was covered by two warm, clean-smelling horse blankets. Under her cheek she felt the soft grain of fine wool cloth. Raising drowsily on her elbow, she found it was Landry’s coat, smoothly folded. In the first waking moment she had thought herself in the bed she shared with her sister Pamela on Beachy Hill; then her sleepy, groping mind had recalled her to an unwilling reality. The little ewe lying at her feet gave a snort in its sleep.

  Instinct made her sit up and look for Lord Landry. He was standing by the window, one curved hand gracefully resting on the frame, the other at his hip. His stance was so relaxed that it never occurred to her that he was spending the night watchful for her sake. Deserted ruins in these troubled times served often as havens for vagabonds. Some were honest men unable to find employment, but others were of a sort that had left more than one body behind them on the move. Perhaps his acute senses felt her gaze on him. Perhaps he had only turned to see what made her stir. He came across the roof and bent on his knees beside her. A single eyelash had fallen to her cheek, and he brushed it gently away with the soft stroke of a finger. After a moment, he said:

  “You called me David.”

  “I—did I?”

  “Yes.” The fire crackled and sang peacefully in the hearth, dancing orange and pale-blue flames flickering as a small log burned through to the middle and collapsed in a mound of glowing coals. He turned to look into the fire, the reflection bringing into relief the hollows behind his cheekbones. “Did you ever look at a fire to see shapes in the flames?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was drowsy. “I’m not very good at it, though. All I ever see are castles and Chinese dragons.”

  “You must concentrate. That—in the corner”—he leaned slightly, indicating the direction her vision should take—“is a dog. Carrying a parcel. Wearing a top hat. Go back to sleep, Frances.”

  She chuckled sleepily and made no protest as he laid her down. “Looks like a castle to me.”

  As he walked back to the window, she said, “Do you think we should go looking for an inn?”

  “It’s still raining.”

  “What if it rains forty days and forty nights?” she asked dreamily.

  “We’d begin to blanch at the sight of potatoes.”

  There was a long silence. Just as he was beginning to believe she’d fallen asleep, she said, “Poor Captain Zephyr. He’ll be distressed about the balloon.”

  “He’ll be glad we’re alive.”

  She cuddled further under the blankets. “D’you know where I meant to be tonight? Fowleby Place.”

  “Were you going to tell the butler Mother Blanchard sent you?”

  “Climb over the wall with one of Richard’s grappling irons.” Her voice was faint.

  “Good God. Did Richard know about that?”

  “No.”

  “Someday—perhaps—you’ll explain to me what all that’s about.”

  “Someday . . . perhaps . . .” Her voice trailed away, and the rhythm of her breathing told him that she had gone to sleep, but it was a long time before he turned back to the window.

  The velvet lullaby of night faded into the cold, prosaic morning. Frances awoke to a crow’s harsh caw that came from opaque gray mist outside the window. Landry came to sit beside her, cross-legged like a schoolboy, and pared an apple for her with a penknife he had found abandoned in a corner. A night’s lost sleep showed little on him. There was a faint trace of blond beard at the line of his jaw, however, and his clothes, like hers, had not come through the previous day unscathed. She was not accustomed to seeing him otherwise than impeccably groomed, and the intimacy of their shared dishevelment increased her awareness of what had passed between them the night before.

  He made a number of suggestions to her. They should find an inn, try to return to London. It was unusual for her that she agreed to everything without comment. He accepted her embarrassment with the same amused tolerance with which he had met her quaint independence, her parson’s-daughter manners. In the yard by the stables there was, underneath a ruined awning, a crumbling well. Landry drew water in a leaking wooden bucket for Frances to drink and splash on her face, and, the sheep tagging after them like children on a picnic, they began their walking journey down the stony road. He smiled and shrugged as she pointed ruefully to a patch of blue silk flapping in a tree.

  Years of disuse had whittled the country lane down to a stony footpath flanked by running ditches that were full of water dark with clay from the newly plowed fields. The wind sighed through faraway belts of conifers, started a mill-sail into a slow spin, and set to waving the knee-high grass of the hedgerow, where budding dog daisies and yellow kingcups nodded. The air was scented with sweet violets and wet grass.

  The nearest village was a four-mile tramp, and by the time the first thatched cottage came into distant view, Frances had long since abandoned her attempt to keep her hem hitched above the muddy lane. Only Landry, with a hidden grin of pity, and a fat black pig rutting in a roadside turnip patch watched her while she attempted to make herself respectable by stuffing her snarled curls under the bedraggled bonnet and brushed at her rain-spotted and wrinkl
ed mantle. It was a fruitless effort, and as they approached the tiny plastered inn with its tulip-planted windowboxes, Landry said:

  “Better let me do the talking.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth when he realized they had been a grave mistake. Frances turned on her heels to face him.

  “You do the talking?”

  “Our story may sound a little off, so I’ll make up some satisfying tale . . .”

  “Do you mean to say—” Frances’ gold-dusted hazel eyes flashed with indignation for the first time since he had been with her in the stable. “—that you will bespeak a lie, Lord Landry? I find lying abhorrent under all circumstances!”

  “Under all circumstances?” he remarked unwisely. “Miss Brightcastle?”

  She blushed painfully as she remembered the numerous occasions she had lied at the theater and at Chez la Princesse, and wondered aloud why it was that Lord Landry felt impelled to belabor every inconsistency of her character when there might be a deficiency or two in his own that needed attention, then marched into the inn, followed at a leisurely pace by Lord Landry.

  Normally the inn’s cozy public room would be empty at this early hour, but Mr. Odiham’s prized Suffolk Punch had foaled a fine colt last night, and a group of his friends had joined to celebrate with him, taking ale before they went to the fields. The host, one Mr. Monson, whose sense of propriety was exceeded only by his ample girth, was irritated to be interrupted in the middle of a florid toast to the new colt when Frances stepped through the door. The omens for the interview were ill from the beginning. The sheep slipped through the door after her and gamboled exuberantly across the well-scrubbed wood floor with muddy hooves before they could be caught and thrust outside. When she introduced herself to the landlord as Miss Atherton, that worthy had replied scathingly that he begged her pardon, he had thought to be confronting Little Bo Peep. By the time Frances had described herself as the victim of a runaway balloon and admitted under cross-examination to having come from Wrenleigh, where she had spent the night among the ruins, it was obvious that she would receive no sympathy from her hostile, snickering audience.