The groom watched the spectacle with a bored expression. Behind him, the six horses in harness stomped their hooves and snorted, and the sweet smell of damp horseflesh mingled with the sharper scent of horse dung. A servant was holding the reins of a seventh horse, dressed for riding.
The Marquis of Larkmoor cleared his throat some more. “It will be time, Louisa,” he said gently. “Calm yourself, my dear.”
“How horrid this all is!” his daughter sniffed. She shot the groom a dark look. “You should have called him out, after all, Papa.”
“Now, now, my dear…”
“The scoundrel,” she muttered before she enfolded Lillian in a tearful, violet-scented embrace. “Oh, my poor, dear child! Do not take it too hard. Bair Hall is supposed to be very stylish, or so I have heard. Oh dear, oh dear. I am so glad Papa insisted that Nanette accompany you. It is a consolation, a consolation indeed. All alone with that horrid man! Oh, it would not bear thinking of!”
“Yes, Aunt Louisa,” Lillian murmured.
“Good-bye, my dear, good-bye. Oh, how I shall miss you!” Upon the Marquis of Larkmoor’s gentle insistence, Aunt Louisa finally broke the embrace with a last: “Oh dear, oh dear!”
The marquis merely pressed Lillian’s hand, but his green eyes, she saw, sparkled with unshed tears. His throat worked. “My dear child…”
“I will be fine,” Lillian reassured him. “Truly.”
There are worse things. So much more worse things.
She smiled a bit. “Thank you… grandfather.”
His lips trembled, but then they lifted in an answering smile. “Take good care of our girl, Nanette,” he said to the old nanny.
Nanette in her dark traveling dress gave the resemblance of a small, frail sparrow. “I always have, my lord,” she said softly. Then she took Lillian’s arm, and together they went toward the waiting carriage.
Fashionable society was still asleep when they left London, two women all alone in a big, wide coach. The groom preferred to ride his own horse. When Lillian put her forehead against the glass of the window, she could sometimes catch a glimpse of him, far ahead, the shock of his auburn hair a beacon for them to follow. After a while, though, rain veiled him from view.
~*~
Rain continued to fall all day and washed out the colors of the landscape until it became dreary and gray. Tucked under one of the benches, Nanette found a basket with cold meat and bread for their lunch, but Lillian was not hungry. She remembered another journey through the rain and wondered what would await them this time.
When darkness fell, they stopped at an inn for the night. The coach rattled into the big yard, where cobblestones glittered wetly and people were waiting with umbrellas. The door of the carriage was opened and a footman offered his hand to Lillian. His livery, which had looked so stylish this morning, was now hidden beneath a rain-soaked, mud-bespeckled coat.
Lillian put her hand in his, felt, for just one fleeting moment, the strength in his. Then she stood on solid ground, and a servant hurried to hold a dark umbrella over her head while the rain plastered his shirt to his skin.
The smells of wet wood and horse and the sweat of men tickled her nose. Slowly, Lillian looked around the yard, three galleries high. Fairy lights twinkled in the windows, danced on the glistening cobblestones and cast shadows over the huge wooden board over the entrance to the yard. They flickered over the form of a coiled dragon and the man standing above him with a bloodied lance.
Lillian remembered black dragons curling over lampshades and on red walls, flanking the man who bore her mark on his skin. But most of all she remembered the song of Camille’s dogs when they cornered their prey.
With a small shudder she turned away.
Busy activity filled the yard, and the clutter of hooves and the shouts of men dimmed out the sounds of the rain. Servants hurried by to take inside the carpetbags from the box of the carriage.
A frail hand touched her arm. “Lillian?” Nanette said behind her.
“Yes. I’ll come,” Lillian murmured, and followed the servant with the umbrella to the door, where the Earl of Ravenhurst stood and talked to the innkeeper and the innkeeper’s wife.
The couple bowed and curtsied at her approach, while the earl shot her a dark look. The lines of his face seemed more deeply etched into his skin, and his stance was slightly awkward as if his left leg was giving him pain. His lips tightened. He went inside, limping.
Lillian stared after him, remembering the sounds of his shuffling steps behind her on a garden path.
“Lillian,” Nanette prompted again.
“Yes,” Lillian said.
Inside, a servant took their redingotes, and they were led to a private parlor where hot soup and a platter of cold meat awaited them. The table was laid out for two. There was no sign of the earl.
“He might be eating downstairs,” Nanette said as they sat down to eat. “You should not worry,
chou-chou
.” When, in truth, it was Nanette who worried.
Lillian smiled a bit and ate her soup and the meat, without tasting any of it. Strange this. Before, she had come to learn to enjoy some meals. She had liked Yorkshire pudding and ratafia ice cream. Now, all food again turned to sand in her mouth.
After the meal, a maid led them to another room. In the gallery the song of the rain greeted them, and the coldness of the water rose to reach for Lillian. She would have liked to stand in the yard below and let the rain soak her clothes. Instead, she stepped into the waiting bedroom brightly lit by candles, the four-poster bed huge, with white linen. Fragrant steam rose from a tub, and on the chest in front of the bed stood her carpetbag, filled with a few clothes for the journey. A thin, white nightgown. A new dress for tomorrow.
“If this is all, my lady?” The girl curtsied. “The maid’s room”—she shot a curious glance to Nanette—“is through here.” She pointed to another door.
“Thank you,” Nanette said. “We shan’t need anything else.” When the maid left, Nanette bustled around the room, opening the bag, plumping up the pillows. “It’s not too bad.”
“No,” Lillian agreed. But, in truth, it did not matter.
“You should go and take a bath,
chou-chou
, as long as the water is still warm.” The old woman ran a finger over the towels and the soap on the stool beside the tub.
“
Oui
,” Lillian murmured. Slowly, she pried the buttons of her dark dress open.
Nanette brushed her hands away. “Let me, child.” Intent on her task, the woman hummed under her breath, an old song with which she had soothed and hushed Lillian when Lillian had been a little girl.
Lillian closed her eyes and inhaled the faint, soft scent of lavender, which still clung to Nanette’s clothes even after a day’s journey. As the familiar hands of the old woman gently stripped her of her clothes, Lillian felt like a little girl again. Like a golden bubble, the memory of security, her mother’s laughter in a sun-warmed garden, rose inside her.
It warmed her when she sat in the cooling water and washed the soap off her body. It warmed her more when Nanette helped her into the thin nightgown and the matching robe. Lillian sat on a chair and let the old woman comb out her curls.
And then, the door banged against the wall. An icy gust of wind swept into the room, made the candles flicker and gooseflesh rise on Lillian’s skin. The soothing movements of the hairbrush stopped. Nanette gasped. On the threshold, with wild hair and burning eyes, loomed the Earl of Ravenhurst. His coat and waistcoat were gone and with them the last veneer of civility.
~*~
The old woman fluttered around his wife like an agitated mother bird. Troy squinted against the light of the candles. He knew that he had drunk too much.
Celebrating his wedding.
He bared his teeth in a silent snarl.
“You.” At his glance, the old woman froze. “Get out!” he growled. He barely recognized his own voice. It resembled the sounds of a feral animal. Harsh. Ferocious.
He watched as the old woman scurried away into the servant’s room. The door closed behind her, and he was alone with his blushing bride.
His bride. Who had branded him like an animal.
He sauntered into the room, looking his fill.
She was sitting on a chair, hands folded in her lap. Where her robe gaped open, her skin shone through the thin material of her nightgown. He could see the curve of a pale breast, a tightly puckered nipple the color of caramel cream. A hot shaft of lust surged into his loins. He wanted to bite that nipple, to make her cry out. To use her pain to ease the churning of remembered humiliation and fear in the pit of his stomach.
Riding all day, though, had taken its toll. And so, when he kicked the door to the room closed, his bad leg nearly made him stumble.
She just watched. As she had done all those months ago.
“Oui,
maman
.
”
Lust was joined by anger.
His fingers twitched with the urge to bury his hands in the mass of her brown curls, to wind all that hair around his fist, around and around.
So he did.
Her eyes were gray, cold and gray.
He forced her to her feet. Then he pressed his mouth on hers and a heady feeling of power coursed through him. Her lips did not move, so he bit them. Afterwards, he watched how they darkened until they were red and ripe.
He remembered the feeling of her breast in his hand. It had felt like a ripe fruit, too. All soft flesh… He pushed the robe off her shoulders. Beneath it, the delicate embroidery on the nightgown circled two lush globes. He pinched the nipples, felt them pebble against his fingers.
He pressed himself against her, hardened.
“Touch me,” he growled and lifted his pelvis against her. “Touch me.”
Obligingly, her hand crept upward, brushed against his cock, before her fingers closed around him through the material of his trousers. He groaned, and with his hands still full of her hair, he pulled her head back and kissed her, hard.
“
Touch me.
” Her hair smelled of flowers.
She stroked him, and fire ran through his body. His hips jerked forward.
Her hair smelled fresh and sweet, of flowers, yes, flowers. Yet their perfume could not banish the stench of the prison. It rose and enveloped Troy, the stench of sweat and blood and excretions. The smell that had soaked his skin until all the water and soap in the world could not wash it away. The end of Gratien’s whip pressed against Troy’s windpipe, cutting off the air.
Troy gasped. Bile rose in his throat.
“Enough,” he croaked. He forced his eyes to open, to focus on the girl before him.
She watched him, unmoved.
Watching… watching… watching…
“Enough!” This time, he would not be subdued. He was stronger.
The rattling of the chains sounded loud in his ears.
“No!” he roared. “Damn it,
no
!”
He gave her a shove, which had her staggering backwards toward the bed.
~*~
Her legs bumped against the hard edge of the bed, and the force of his push sent her sprawling across the white linen. His face, she saw, gleamed with sweat, and his chest heaved as if he had run a mile.
How curious that he should sweat, when her own skin seemed encrusted with ice.
She did not move. There was no knowing what might set another person off. She had come to learn that at a very early age.
So she just watched as he raised trembling hands to the buttons of his shirt. “No,” he murmured. “
No!
” With another roar, he ripped his shirt, dragged it off his body. Unnoticed, the garment dropped to the floor.
He looked different.
For one thing, his skin was darker and covered with hair.
And he was no longer painfully thin, either. Instead, muscles bounced and rippled, rounded his arms and shoulders.
But all of that dimmed to insignificance as Lillian’s gaze fastened on the mark that was half hidden by the damp, curly hair on his chest. No longer angry red, it had faded to a dark brown. A dark brown lily.
A lily for Lillian.
His chest gleamed with sweat. It ran in tiny rivulets over his skin and soaked the waistband of his trousers. When he followed her onto the bed, he limped badly.
“Bitch!” he rasped.
Even his scent was no longer civilized, all lingering traces of sandalwood and oakmoss washed away by the sharpness of his sweat.
His hands fastened around the collar of her nightdress. His fingers trembled, then he ripped the flimsy material apart. Cold air whispered over Lillian’s skin, before the weight of his body pressed her into the mattress.
Yet his body gave off no heat. Astonished, she noticed the clamminess of his flesh. Fine tremors raced through him, and the breath hitched in his throat.
There was no evidence of arousal.
He stared at her.
“Bitch,” he whispered. “Bitch!”
The tremors intensified.
He gasped.
His face took on a pasty color. For a moment he looked as if he was going to be sick.
“God… dear God…” Breathing heavily, he rolled off her and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
For a while he just sat there, elbows on his knees and hands buried in his hair, which had turned dark with perspiration. Finally, he stood, and as he turned to look down on her, his face was devoid of all expression. It was a granite mask of human flesh and bone. His eyes were still intensely blue, but instead of burning with anger or hatred, they were flat and dead.
“You disgust me,” he said. “God, how you disgust me.” And then he turned and walked out of the room. With a loud bang, the door slammed shut behind him.
Alone in the wide bed on the stainless, white linen, Lillian closed her eyes.
PART III
When will the hundred summers die,
And thought and time be born again,
And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,
Bring truth that sways the soul of men?
—Tennyson,
The Day Dream
Chapter 8
From the distance, Bair Hall seemed a jumble of oriels and turrets and chimneys. Lots of chimneys. The bricks blurred into a single rusty-brown, the shades of red, orange and apricot lost just like the delicate blue pattern among them, a diamond-shaped tattoo on the thick hide of the Hall. Due to the fact that the first Earl of Ravenhurst had preferred a good view above a weather-sheltered home, the Hall sat comfortably on its green hill like a fat brown hen on her eggs.