The Fiery Cross, Page 67

  gentlemen lingered in low-voiced political conversation at one end of the dining room, the table long since cleared and empty brandy glasses forgotten by their elbows. Jamie wasn't one of them.

  A heavy-eyed slave in livery bowed as I poked my head in, murmuring to ask whether I wanted food or drink. I hadn't eaten anything since supper, but I waved him away, too tired to think of food.

  I paused at the first landing and glanced down the hall toward Jocasta's suite Of rooms, but all was quiet there, the charivari and horseplay over. There was a large dent in the linenfold paneling, where a heavy body had struck, and glancing up, I could see several burned spots in the ceiling, where shots had been fired into it.

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  The butler Ulysses sat guard on a stool by the door, still dressed in wig and formal livery, head nodding over folded arms. A candle guttered and spat in the sconce above him. By its wavering fight, I could see that his eyes were closed, but he wore a deep frown; he hunched in his sleep, and his lips moved briefly, as though he dreamed of evil things. I thought to waken him, but even as I moved toward him, the dream passed. He stretched, half-rousing, then fell asleep again, his face relaxing into calm. An instant later, the candle flickered out.

  I listened, but heard no sound in the darkness save Ulysses's heavy breathing. Whether Duncan and Jocasta murmured understandings to each other behind the curtains of their bed, or lay silent, side by side and eternally separate, no one would ever know. I sent them a mental wish for happiness, and dragged myself upward, knees and back aching, wishing for my own bed-and my own husband's understanding.

  Through an open casement on the second-floor landing, I heard distant whoops, laughter, and the occasional crack of recreational gunfire, borne on the night air. The younger, wilder gentlemen-and a few old enough to know better-had gone down to the river landing in company with a dozen bottles of whisky and brandy to shoot frogs, or so I was informed.

  The ladies, though, were all asleep. The second floor was quiet save for the buzz of muffled snoring. By contrast to the chilly corridor outside, the chamber itself was stifling, though the fire had burned down to a crimson coal bed that shed no more than an eerie red glow across the hearth.

  With so many guests in the house, the only people with the luxury of a private bedroom were the bridal pair; everyone else was crammed into the few available rooms, willy-nilly. Two large tester beds and a trundle occupied the room, with straw-tick pallets spread over most of the remaining floor space. Each bed was packed like a sardine tin with shift-clad women lying side by side across the mattress, radiating as much moist heat as a greenhouse full of orchids.

  I breathed shaffowlythe air was filled with a cloying mixture of stale sweat, barbecue, and fried onions, French perfume, drink-sodden breath, and the sharp, sweet smell of vanilla beans-and shed my gown and shoes as quickly as I could, hoping not to break out into a drenching sweat before I could undress. I was still keyed up from the events of the day, but exhaustion was pulling like lead weights at my limbs, and I was glad enough to tiptoe through the sprawl of bodies and creep into my accustomed space near the foot of one of the big beds.

  My mind was still buzzing with speculations of all sorts, and in spite of the hypnotic lull of so much slumber all around me, I lay stiff-limbed and sore, watching the silhouette of my bare toes against the hearth's dying light.

  Betty had passed from her stupor into what looked like a normal deep sleep. When she woke in the morning, we would find out who had given her the cup, and-perhaps-what was in it. I hoped that Jemmy would sleep comfortably as well. But what was really on my mind, of course, was Jamie.

  I hadn't ken him among the card players, nor yet among the men talking low-voiced of taxes and tobacco.

  I hadn't seen Phillip Wylie anywhere on the first floor of the house, either. I could well believe he was out with the revelers by the river landing. That was

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  his set and his style, wealthy young men who would seek diversion in drink and carouse in the dark, careless both of cold and danger, laughing and chasing each other by the light of random gunfire.

  That was neither Jamie's set nor his style, but the thought of him among them was what made my feet curl with chill, despite the heat of the room.

  He wouldn't do anytbing stupid, I assured myself, rolling onto my side, knees drawn up as much as possible in the cramped quarters. He wouldn't; but his notion of stupid wasn't always the same as mine, by any means.

  Most of the male guests were bedded down in the outbuildings, or in the parlors; as I passed, I had seen anonymous sleeping figures sprawled on the floor of the front parlor, snoring loudly, wrapped in their cloaks before the fire. I had not gone to poke among them, but doubtless Jamie was there-he had had as long a day as I had, after all.

  But it was not like him to retire without coming to wish me good night, no matter what the circumstances. Of course, he had been annoyed with me, and despite the promise of our interrupted conversation on the terrace, we had not quite made up the quarrel. Re-inflamed it, rather, with beastly Phillip Wylie's invitation. My hands curled, thumbs rubbing at the slight calluses that marked the spots where my rings normally sat. Effing Scot!

  Next to me Jemima Hatfield stirred and murmured, disturbed by my restlessness. I eased myself slowly back onto my side, and stared sightlessly at the oaken footboard in front of me.

  Yes, he was undoubtedly still angry about Phillip Wylie's advances. So was

  1--or I would be, were I not so tired. How dare he-I yawned, nearly dislocating my jaw, and decided that it really wasn't worth the bother of being annoyed, at least not now.

  But it wasn't like Jamie to avoid me, angry or not. He wasn't the sort of man to sulk or brood. He would seek a confrontation or provoke a fight, without a moment's hesitation; but I didn't think he had ever let the sun go down on anger-at least not with regard to me.

  Which left me to worry about where he was, and what in bloody hell he was doing. And the necessity of worrying about him was making me really angry, if only because that was better than being worried.

  But it bad been a very long day, and as the moments passed, and the faint pops of gunfire from the river landing gradually ceased, languor stole over me, blunting my fears and scattering my thoughts like spilled sand. The gentle breathing of the women all around me lulled me like the sound of wind in the trees, and my grip on reality slackened and at last fell free.

  I might have expected dreams of violence or nightmares of dread, but my subconscious had plainly had enough of that. In the contrary way of such things, it instead chose to dwell on another thread of the day's events. PerhaAs it was the warmth of the room, or simply the closeness of so many bodies, but I dreamed vividly and erotically, the tides of arousal washing me now and then near to the shores of wakefulness, then once more carrying me out into the deeps of unconsciousness.

  There were horses in my dreams; glowing black Friesians with flowing manes that rippled in the wind as the stallions ran beside me. I saw my own legs stretch and leap; I was a white mare, and the ground flew past in a blur of green

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  beneath my hooves, until I stopped and turned, waiting for the one, a broadchested stallion who came to me, his breath hot and moist against my neck, his white teeth closing on my nape ...

  "I am the King of Ireland," he said, and I came slowly awake, tingling from head to foot, to find that someone was gently stroking the sole of said foot. Still bemused by the carnal images of my dreams, I was not alarmed by this,

  but merely muzzily pleased to discover that I had feet after all, and not hooves. My toes curled and my foot flexed, reveling in the delicate touch of the thumb that traced its way from the ball of my foot down the high arch and up into the hollow below my anklebone, managing to stimulate an entire plexus of sensation. Then I came all the way awake, with a small jerk.

  Whoever it was plainly sensed my return to consciousness, for the touch lef
t my foot momentarily. Then it came back, this time more firmly, a large warm hand curling quite round my foot, the thumb executing a firm but languid massage at the base of my toes

  By this time, I was quite awake, and mildly startled, but not frightened. I wiggled my foot briefly, as though to throw off the hand, but it squeezed my foot lightly in response, and then its companion gently pinched my great toe.

  Tbis little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed bome. . I could hear the rhyme as clearly as though it had been spoken aloud, as the fingers deftly pinched their way across my toes, one by one.

  And this little piggy went weee-weee-weec, all the way bome! The touch flicked tickling down the sole of my foot and I jerked, an involuntary giggle caught in my throat.

  I lifted my head, but the hand seized my foot again and squeezed in admonition. The fire had gone out altogether and the room was black as velvet; even with eyes completely dark-adapted, I could gain nothing but the sense of a hunched figure near my feet, an amorphous blob that shifted like mercury, its edges blending with and disappearing into the dark of the air.

  The hand slid gently up the calf of my leg. I twitched violently, and the woman next to me snorted, reared up with a bleary, "Hnh?" and collapsed again, in a whoosh.

  My stomach muscles quivered with suppressed laughter. He must have felt the slight vibration-the fingers left my little toe with a gentle squeeze, and stroked the bottom of my foot, making all my toes curl tight.

  The fingers curled into a fist, pressing along the length of my sole, then suddenly opened, cupping my heel. His thumb stroked my ankle, and paused, questioning. I didn't move.

  His fingers were getting warmer; there was only a faint sensation of cold as they followed the curve of my calf and sought shelter in the soft place behind my knee. The fingers played a quick tattoo on the sensitive skin there, and I twitched in agitation. They slowed and stopped, settling surely on the artery where my pulse beat fast; I could feel it, blood rushing past where the skin was so thin the veins would show blue beneath it.

  I heard a sigh as he shifted his weight; then one hand cupped the round of my thigh, and slid slowly upward. The other followed, pressing my legs gently, inexorably apart.

  My heart was thumping in my ears and my breasts felt swollen, nipples

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  poking hard and round through the thin muslin of my shift. I took a deep breath, and smelled rice powder.

  All at once, my heart gave a double-thump and nearly stopped, as the sudden thought sprang to life in my mind-what if it wasn't Jamie?

  I lay quite still, trying not to breathe, concentrating on the hands, which were doing something delicate and quite unspeakable. Large hands, they were large hands; I could feel the knuckles pressing the soft inner flesh of my thigh. But Phillip Wylie had large hands, too; quite large for his size, I had seen him scoop up a handful of oats for his stallion, Lucas, and the horse bury its big black nose in the palm.

  Calluses; the roving hands--oh, God!-were smoothly callused. But so were Wylie's; dandy he might be, but a horseman; his palms were quite as smooth and hard as Jamie's.

  It had to be Jamie, I assured myself, lifting my head an inch or so and peering into the black velvet darkness. Ten little pigs ... of course it was Jamie! Then one of the hands did something quite startling and I gasped out loud and jerked, limbs twitching. My elbow slammed into the ribs of the woman next to me, who snapped upright with a loud exclarnation. The hands retreated abruptly, squeezing my ankles in a hasty farewell.

  There was a shuffling noise as someone crawled hurriedly across the floor, then a flash of dim light and a breath of cold air from the corridor as the door opened and shut again immediately.

  "Wha-?" said Jernima next to me, in woozy astonishment. "Whozat?" Receiving no answer, she flounced, muttered, and at last lay down again, to fall promptly fast asleep.

  I did not.

  IN VINO VERITAS

  LAY SLEEPLESS for quite a long time, listening to the peaceful snores and rustlings of my bedmates, and to the agitated thump of my own heart. Every nerve in my body felt as though it were sticking out through my

  skin, and when Jemima Hatfield rolled unconsciously into me, I jabbed her viciously in the ribs with my elbow, so that she uttered a startled "Whoof?" and sat halfway up, blinking and muttering, before collapsing slowly back into the*% communal sea of sleep.

  As for me, my small bark of consciousness was adrift on the flood, spinning rudderless, but without the slightest chance of being pulled under.

  I simply couldn't decide how to feel. On the one hand, I was aroused-

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  unwillingly, to be sure, but still most definitely aroused. Whoever my nocturnal visitor had been, he knew his way around a woman's body.

  That would argue for its being Jamie, I thought. Still, I had no idea how experienced Phillip Wylie might be in the arts of love-I had spurned his approaches in the stable so promptly that he had had no chance of demonstrating any skills he might possess in that direction.

  But my midnight visitor had not used any caress that I could positively identify as being in Jamie's repertoire. Now, if he had used his mouth ... I shied away from that line of thought like a spooked horse, and Jernima gave a muffled grunt as I convulsed slightly, my skin rippling in involuntary response to the images it evoked.

  I didn't know whether to feel amused or outraged, seduced or violated. I was extremely angry; I was sure of that much, at least, and the surety gave me some small anchor in the maelstrom of emotion. Still, I had no idea as to the correct target of my anger, and with nowhere to aim that particularly destructive emotion, it was simply crashing round inside me, knocking things down and leaving dents.

  "Oof," said Jemima, in a pointed-and quite conscious-tone of voice. Evidently I wasn't the only one being dented by my emotions.

  "Mmmm?" I murmured, feigning half-sleep. "Glrgl. Bzg." There was a small tinge of guilt in the mix, aswell.

  If I were sure it bad been Jamie, would I be angry?

  The worst of it was, I realized, that there was absolutely nothing I could do to find out who it had been. I could scarcely ask Jamie whether he had crept in and fondled me in the darkness-because if he hadn't, his immediate response would certainly be to assassinate Phillip Wylie bare-handed.

  I felt as though tiny electric eels were squirming under my skin. I stretched as hard as I could, alternately tensed and relaxed every muscle-and still could find no way to keep still.

  At last, I slid cautiously off the bed, and made my way to the door, with a glance at my erstwhile bedmates, who lay slumbering peaceffilly under the quilts like a row of perfumed sausages. Moving with great stealth, I eased the door open and peeked out into the hallway. It was either very late or very early; the tall window at the end of the corridor had gone to gray, but the last of the stars still showed, vanishing pinpoints on the charcoal satin of the sky.

  It was cold in the hall, away from the contained body heat of the women, but I welcomed the chill; the blood was pulsing just under my skin, and I bloomed with heat and agitation. A nice cooldown was exactly what I wanted. I made my way quietly to the back stairs, meaning to go down and outside for a breath of air.

  I stopped dead at the top of the staircase. A man stood at the foot of the stair, a silhouette tall and black against the panes of the double French doors. I didn't think I had made any sound, but he turned at once, face lifted toward me. Even in the poor light, I knew at once that it was Jamie.

  He was still clad in the clothes he had worn the night before-coat and waistcoat, frilled shirtand buckled breeches. The shirt was open at the neck, though, coat and weskit unbuttoned and askew. I could see the narrow line of

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  white linen, the flesh of his throat dark against it. His hair was loose; he had been running his hands through it.

  "Come down," he said softly.

  I hesitated, looking back over my shoulder. A ladylik
e medley of snores came from the room I had just left. Two slaves were sleeping on the floor in the hall, curled under blankets, but neither moved.

  I looked back. He didn't speak again, but lifted two fingers, beckoning. The scent of smoke and whisky filled the stairwell.

  The blood was thrumming in my ears-and elsewhere. My face was flushed, my hair damp at the temples and on my neck; cool air rose up under my shift, touched the patch of dampness at the base of my spine, the film of slickness where my thighs brushed together.

  I came down slowly, cautiously, trying not to let the stairs creak under my bare feet. It occurred to me belatedly that this was ridiculous; the slaves thundered up and down these stairs hundreds of times a day. Even so, I felt the need for secrecy; the house was still asleep, and the stairwell was filled with a gray light that seemed as fragile as smoked glass. A sudden sound, a move too quick, and something might explode under my feet, with a flash like a lightbulb popping.

  His eyes stayed fixed on me, dark triangles in the paler dark of his face. He stared at me with a fierce intensity, as though to drag me down the stairs by the force of his gaze alone.

  I stopped, one step from the bottom. There was no blood on his clothes; thank God for that.

  It wasn't that I'd never seen Jamie drunk before. No wonder he hadn't come Up the stairs to me. I thought he was very drunk now, and yet there was something quite different in this. He stood rock-solid, legs set Aide, betrayed only by a certain deliberation in the way he moved his head to look at me. "What-" I began, whispering.

  "Come here," he said. His voice was low, rough with sleeplessness and whisky.

  I hadn't time either to reply or to acquiesce; he seized my arm and pulled me toward him, then swept me off the last step, crushed me to him, and kissed me. It was a most disconcerting kiss-as though his mouth knew mine all too well, and would compel my pleasure, regardless of my desires.

  His hair smelled of a long night's smoke-tobacco and woodsmoke and the smoke of beeswax candles. He tasted so strongly of whisky that I felt lightheaded, as though the alcohol in his blood were seeping into mine through our skins where they touched, through the sealed membranes of our mouths. Something else was seeping into me from him, as well-a sense of overpowering lust, as blind as it was dangerous.

  I wanted to remonstrate with him, to push him away. Then I decided that I didn't, but it wouldn't have made any difference if I had. He didn't mean to let go.

  One big hand was gripping the back of my neck, warm and hard on my skin, and I thought of a stallion's teeth closing on the neck of the mare he mounts, and shivered from scalp to sole. His thumb accidentally pressed the great artery

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  under my jaw; darkness swam behind my eyes and my knees began to buckleHe felt it and let go, easing me back so that I was almost lying prone upon the stairs, his weight half on me and his hands seeking.

  I was naked under my shift, and the thin muslin might as well not have been there.

  The hard edge of a stair pressed into my back, and it occurred to me, in the dim way that things do when you're drunk, that he was just about to take me right there on the stairs, and devil take anyone who might see.

  I got my mouth free of his long enough to gasp, "Not here!" in his ear. That seemed to bring him momentarily to his senses; he lifted his head, blinking like one roused from a nightmare, eyes wide and blind. Then he nodded once, jerkily, and rose, pulling me to my feet with him.

  The maids' cloaks were hanging by the door; he seized one and wrapped it round me, then picked me up bodily and shouldered his way through the door, past a staring housemaid with a slop jar in her hands.

  He set me down when he reached the brick path outside; the bricks were cold under my feet. Then we were moving together through the gray light across a landscape of shadow and wind, still entangled with each other, stumbling, jostling, and yet somehow almost flying, clothes fluttering round us and cold air brushing our skins with the rude touch of spring, bound for some vaguely sensed and yet inevitable destination.

  The stables. He hit the door and pulled me through with him into the warm dark, thrust me hard against a wall.

  "I must have ye now, or die," he said, breathless, and then his mouth was on mine again, his face cold from the air outside, and his breath steaming 'With mine.

  Then he drew abruptly away, and I staggered, pressing my hands against the rough bricks of the wall to keep my balance.

  "Hold up your hands," he said. "What?" I said stupidly.

  "Your hands. Put them up."

  In complete bewilderment, I held them up, and felt him take hold of the left one, fumbling. Pressure and warmth, and the faint light from the open door shone on my gold wedding ring. Then he seized my right hand, shoved my silver ring onto my finger, the metal warm from the heat of his body. He raised my hand to his mouth, and bit my knuckles, hard.

  Then his hand was on my breast, cold air brushed my thighs, and I felt the scratch of the bricks on my bare backside.

  I made a noise, and he clapped a hand over my mouth. Speared as neatly as a landed trout, I was just as helpless, pinned flapping against the wall.

  He took his hand away and replaced it with his mouth, engulfing mine. I could feel the small urgent growls he was making in his throat, and felt another one, much louder, rising in mine.

  My shift was wadded high around my waist, and my bare buttocks smacked rhythmically against the roughened brick, but I felt no pain at all. I gripped him by the shoulders and held on.

  His hand skimmed my thigh, pushing at the drifts of linen that threatened to