Improper Arrangements (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

“Stop...need to stop for a moment,” I wheezed. “I need to catch my breath.”

We’d been walking for hours, our pace punishing, for Elijah swore he saw evidence of worsening weather in the distance. For my part I could discern nothing more than another beautiful day, but as the sun rose and began to burn the dew from the high meadows I realized he was right. Low clouds, little more than smudges of charcoal in the brightening sky, had appeared on the horizon, and as we walked on, mile after mile, they grew ever nearer and more menacing.

Elijah had told me we were following the Sentier des Chamois, which was aptly named as the path was so narrow and precipitous in parts that it was better suited to mountain goats than men. It was hard work, for the path was terribly steep and littered with rocks small and large that tripped me up whenever I dared to look away from my feet.

We had just passed through the Col Termin, barely pausing to take in the splendid view of the valley below, and were approaching the Col de Louvie when I insisted that we stop.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Take a few sips of water. Not too much at first. Is that any better?”

“Yes,” I said once I’d managed to catch my breath. “Thank you.”

“It was only a drink of water. No need to thank me.”

“No. I meant for my gowns...for making me shorten the skirts. I’d never have managed otherwise.”

“Was only being sensible. Are you hungry?”

“Famished.”

“Let’s keep on until we reach the Col de Louvie, then stop to eat there. Will give you a chance to admire the view.”

“Is it nicer than at the Col Termin?”

“Incomparably so.”

We reached the pass a half hour later. Though the surrounding summits loomed far overhead, their peaks lost in the advancing clouds, we had climbed higher than I’d ever imagined possible, so far that the valleys we’d left behind had become indistinct swaths of green and brown. From where we stood I could see no road, no structure, no evidence at all of civilization. If not for the sound of an approaching party of climbers, I might have imagined Elijah and I were alone in the world.

“What do you think?” he asked softly.

“Incomparable, just as you said. I’d have thought the mountains would begin to look smaller. But they only seem bigger. More imposing.”

“I know.”

“Do they...are they less intimidating once you’ve climbed them?”

“No. The opposite, in fact.”

“Then you’re the bravest man I’ve ever met.”

“I doubt it. More likely the most foolish. Shall we eat?”

We found a low boulder, well wedged into the ground, and sat on it to eat our lunch of dried sausage, smoked cheese and bread. I sketched a cluster of
Cerastium uniflorum
as I ate, concentrating on capturing the delicacy of their shirred ivory petals, and tried not to think of the storm clouds to the north. What if the storm broke before we could reach the next village? Where would we shelter?

“Let’s be off,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “We have at least three or four more hours of walking before we reach the
cabane
on the other side of the Col de Prafleuri.”

“And after that? Tomorrow?” I knew the answer already, for I’d read any number of guides. So why did I ask?

“Downhill to Arolla.”

Arolla, where we would part. And we would likely never meet again.

“Alice? Is anything the matter?”

“Not at all,” I said brightly. “Simply a mote of dust in my eye.”

On the far side of the Col de Louvie, the landscape was stark and bare and nearly void of vegetation, at least when compared to the verdant slopes we’d climbed that morning. A wide, nearly featureless slope lay before us, the path almost impossible to make out.

Elijah led the way confidently, however, and although I stumbled from time to time on loose rock, I was able to keep up with him. We were walking parallel to the slope, maintaining our altitude rather than continuing downhill, and I was so intent on keeping my feet that when Elijah halted I walked straight into him.

Setting his pack on the ground, he opened a side pocket and withdrew a cloth-wrapped bundle, which he unwrapped to reveal a pair of oddly shaped metal contraptions. They were the shape of my bootprint, with leather ties that extended from each side, and were studded on the underside and front with short, sharp spikes.

“You’ll need to put these on. Climbing irons,” he explained. “We’re at the edge of the glacier.”

I looked past him and was astonished to see that the way ahead was blocked by a swath of snow and ice that covered the entire slope. How had I not noticed it before?

“The only way around the glacier is to descend into the valley,” Elijah said. “And we don’t have time for that. Now stand here while I fit these on.”

The frames, once tied to the bottom of my boots, felt secure enough, but I couldn’t stifle my feeling of apprehension.

“What if I fall? The slope is so steep.”

“I won’t let you.” He finished fastening a second set of irons to his own boots. After hoisting his pack onto his shoulders, he stepped onto the glacier, walking backwards. He held out his hands and I took them without hesitation. Of course he wouldn’t let me fall.

Our progress was slow, for I was unused to the irons on my feet and faltered often. Several times we were confronted with expanses of bare, almost smooth rock, forcing us to remove the climbing irons so as not to dull the points, then fasten them on again once we were back on the snow and ice.

After what felt like hours we reached the far side of the glacier, and Elijah put away the irons for good. Ahead, but up a dauntingly sleep slope, was the Col de Prafleuri. I knew we had to reach it before sundown, else face a night sleeping rough during a storm.

I was so tired. I had never been so tired. All I wanted was to sit down, right in the middle of the path, and let oblivion find me.

“Take my hand,” came his voice. “We’re going to stop soon. I promise. I won’t make you climb to the
col
tonight.”

“But the storm—”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be warm and dry.”

It couldn’t have been later than four or five o’clock in the evening, but the sky had darkened and the air was heavy and uncannily still. I looked from side to side, spying no shelter from the threatening storm.

“Here we are,” he said at last, leading me off the path toward a group of large glacier-tumbled boulders. “Sit down—rest your back against the rock here—while I set up our bivouac.”

Bivouac
, I thought sleepily, trying to remember what that was. Such an odd word to use.

“Alice? Don’t fall asleep yet. I’ve almost finished.”

I did my best to do as he’d asked, but my rocky perch was surprisingly comfortable, and he was taking so very long to put together that...that thing with the odd name...

I woke to the sound of driving rain. It was louder than the English rain I knew, which was soft and sweet and made the earth smell warm and alive. This rain was foreign, percussive, and it smelled of dust and cordite and danger.

I opened my eyes, but all was dark around me.

“Elijah? Are you there?”

“Here behind you,” he answered, his words gentle against my ear.

“Where are we?”

“In the bivouac. A makeshift tent I set up.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“An hour or two. Are you comfortable?”

I was, which surprised me. “Yes, thank you. What do we do now?”

“We eat. We sleep some more. And we wait for morning. Do you want to sit up?”

“Not just yet.”

The warmth of his body against my back and legs felt divine, as did the weight of his hand on my hip. I was safe with him, here, in the refuge he had built for us. So it seemed only natural to take his hand and place it over my sex, covered as it was by my skirts and undergarments, and wait for him to respond.

“Very well,” he said, a smile softening his voice. He pushed up on one elbow and reached across me; from the sounds that followed I deduced he was preparing the sponge.

“Let me get your skirts out of the way,” he whispered, pushing them high around my waist.

He set the sponge in place inside me easily, for my sex was already wet for him, and then he guided me onto my back. I could see nothing, could feel nothing beyond the heat of his body as he loomed above me.

“Now, Alice.”

I knew what to do. I reached between us and unfastened his trousers, pushing them and his drawers low about his hips. I took hold of his cock and guided him between my legs, past the slit in my undergarments, until he was at my opening.

“
Now
, Elijah.”

He filled me with one slow, mesmerizing thrust, driving away the night, banishing the storm. I saw nothing yet felt everything, my other senses sharpened to a keener edge than I’d ever known.

The almost-pain of being stretched so tight I could scarcely breathe. The scorching caress of his lips at my temple. The nearly unbearable tightness of my erect nipples as they rubbed against my chemise. The enmeshing web of bliss, drawing tighter, that promised so much more.

My universe was reduced to this, to Elijah, to the sound of his every breath, the scent of his skin, the heat of his touch. I needed nothing more. I desired nothing else.

Nothing beyond him, in this moment, in this void that enveloped us.

Chapter Twelve

After our lovemaking was done, he gathered me close and tucked my head under his chin. We lay there, unmoving, until the silence between us was fractured by a most mortifying sound: the insistent growls of my empty stomach.

“You ought to have said something,” he chided mildly. Pulling away from me, he sat up and once again rummaged in his pack. A moment later light filled our shelter.

“Hold this for a moment while I let in some air,” he said, handing me a small safety lantern. He knelt at the far end of the bivouac and, folding back a corner of the waterproofed sheet he’d used to build the tent, reached into the driving rain. When he turned around he held a small leather bucket that was nearly full of rainwater. “Drink some of this. Then we’ll eat.”

We feasted on the remnants of the same food we’d eaten at lunch, the bread gone stale, but all the same it was one of the nicest meals I’d ever had. “This is delicious. Thank you.”

“You honestly think so? You, the daughter of a peer of the realm?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Peasant food, eaten in a ramshackle tent, in the company of a disreputable adventurer, in miserable weather like this?”

“All the more reason to enjoy what I have.”

“I know. I agree. You’re...it’s only that you’re such an unusual woman.”

“Me?” I asked, truly surprised. “After all the people you’ve met in your life? You think
I’m
unusual?”

“Singular is the better adjective. And I mean it as a compliment.”

“Thank you, then. But I don’t think—”

“Look at how you live, for a start. I’ve never met a woman who has the resolve to live as you do.”

“I didn’t mean to become...I mean, it isn’t what I dreamed of when I was a girl.”

“So why?”

“You honestly want to know?”

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes, wishing for a moment that we had no lantern, and steadied myself. If nothing else, Elijah was my friend, and he deserved to know, though the very thought of those wretched days made me feel ill.

“When I was eighteen, I was seduced by my painting master. Not unwillingly, I should add. He was...well, he was very French. And very persuasive.”

“Were you found out?”

“Almost straight away. My parents were horrified, naturally, but supportive. Kind, even. I was whisked away to deepest Somerset, one of my father’s smaller estates, until my mother was certain all danger had passed.”

“And the cretin who took advantage of you?”

“Had my father to contend with. I think, at first, Jean-Philippe had imagined he might persuade Papa to allow a match between us. I was the third girl in the family, after all, and not accounted much of a beauty.”

“The
bastard.
”

“I suspect Papa would agree with you. At any rate, he ran him off by threatening to tell my brothers—they’re extremely protective, all three of them. And hot-tempered.”

“So after that you decided...?”

“No. I was still young enough, and silly enough, to believe I might still marry well. It was only a few months into the Season, so I was taken back to London—they explained my absence with a vague story regarding an ailing relative—and my mother set about finding me a husband. It didn’t take long.”

“You were married?” he asked, his face contorted with—concern? Disgust?

“No, never. I should have said that they found me a suitable fiancé. Lord Alfred Wraxhall.”

“Leo Wraxhall? I know him. I mean, I knew him once. We were friends in our younger days.”

“I hardly knew him at all. But he seemed to like me well enough, and after all the fuss I’d already caused I didn’t have the heart to object to an engagement.”

“What happened?”

“Our parents planned for the engagement to be announced at the Duchess of Sutherland’s ball. But Lord Alfred never appeared. Late that evening, after I’d stood there waiting for hours, we discovered he had cried off. He was in love with someone else, you see, and eloped with her not long after.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“Not in the slightest. But the scandal and humiliation...”

“What was so scandalous? Engagements are broken every day.”

“Unfortunately, Lord Alfred had a less than lily-white reputation. It was rumored, afterward, that he’d corrupted me before running off with his cousin’s wife. Of course it was ridiculous—we’d never once been alone together, not even for a minute—but the damage was done. Friends cast me aside. Invitations were withdrawn. That sort of thing.”

With that the memories came flooding back—remorse, shame, embarrassment so acute it could still turn my stomach nearly a decade later. What a fool I had been. What a naïve, stupid, gullible fool.

“Makes me all the happier I left England years ago,” Elijah said gruffly.

“I suffered through it for months before I realized that the only person who could make me happy was
me.
No one else. So I went to my parents and told them I no longer wished to marry, but would live my life independently, on my own terms. I alone would control my future. And I would do it with or without their blessing, though of course I very much wished to remain in accord with them.”

“Your father actually agreed to this?”

“In that respect I was very fortunate, particularly since I was only eighteen. He could have just as easily had me locked away. But he and Mama had seen what I had endured, so they let me have my way. Since then I’ve lived in my own house, taken charge of my own monies, managed my life as I see fit.”

“What did they think of your walking the High-Level Route?”

“They weren’t happy about my going. But Tom explained he would help me find a suitable guide, and all was well. They insisted I bring my maid and a footman with me, but I left them at my cousin’s in Paris.”

“Is that where you’ll return once we reach Arolla?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ll go on to Zermatt first. I should like to see the Matterhorn at closer quarters.”

“Excellent idea. But first we need to sleep. Lie down, where you were before, while I douse the lantern.”

He stretched out behind me, just as he’d done before while I slept, and I cuddled gratefully against him, soaking in the heat of his body and the strength of his encircling arms. He must have been terribly tired, for he was asleep within seconds, leaving me alone in the dark with my thoughts.

I didn’t regret having revealed so much to him, but I wasn’t at ease with the notion, either. What did it serve by telling him the truth? I could have chosen to gloss over the subject with a laugh, could have said I’d always been so disposed and had always kept my counsel.

It would have been a lie, of course. Until the twin disappointments of Jean-Philippe and Lord Alfred, I had been a perfectly conventional girl. I had expected to live an entirely conventional life. I’d had no ambitions beyond marrying well and becoming a mother.

When I’d begun to respond to Jean-Philippe’s flirtation, I’d known full well my parents would never allow him to court me. But I’d been bored, and curious, and he had been terribly charming, and so I allowed him to persuade me to do things I didn’t precisely want to do. I allowed him to trample my conscience.

When my parents rushed me toward a patched-up alliance with Lord Alfred, I stopped my ears to the consequences of marrying a man so unknown to me. I ignored my very real misgivings, allowed the arrangements to be made—and, once again, I suffered for it.

It could have been so much worse. I could have become pregnant with Jean-Philippe’s child. I could have been forced to marry him. Or, just as disastrously, I could have married Lord Alfred. As both men had been entirely indifferent to me, a lifetime of misery would have been certain.

When I withdrew from society, almost a decade ago, people assumed I’d given up. Resigned myself to spinsterhood when I was still a green girl of eighteen. But I hadn’t given up. I had simply decided not to compromise.

Holding fast to my principles wasn’t at all difficult, for the men I met were singularly uninspiring—certainly not the stuff of which romantic dreams were fashioned. Nor was I the object of much attention, despite my wealth, for I was far too independent-minded for most men’s comfort.

Certain that I had taken the correct path in life, I was content with my lot. I had my home, my art, my family and my friends. What more did I need?

Then Elijah walked out of the forest, caught me when I fell and set about exploding every last one of my hard-fought certainties. As for my contentment, he had reduced it to ashes.

How could I ever be content in the presence of such a fascinating and complicated man? I desired him beyond reason, but the depths of that desire frightened me. What if it led me to think I were in love with him? How would I recover from that?

It was fortunate that Elijah had no intention of falling in love with me. “I can make you no promises, can offer you nothing,” he had said. And though he treated me with great fondness and seemed to hold me in genuine esteem, he had intimated no finer feelings. Had not spoken of love or everlasting ardor or indeed of our having any future together past the moment we arrived in Arolla.

It was for the best that we part. He knew it, as did I.

Now if only I could convince my heart.