John rode towards the edge of the cliff, far
from the sheep so as not to scare them, and then came around the
edge slowly, driving them back. The animals started to turn and run
towards the house, and the dogs took heart and found their place on
either side of them, guiding them back.
"Ride with me," John said, extending his hand
to Hester. The rain was very strong now, falling in white
sheets.
"No," she cried, "I must make sure they don't
lose their way again!"
The wind was so high they could barely hear
each other, but he saw that she was helping to drive the sheep back
towards the pen, while the dogs kept them on their course.
He rode behind her to catch any stray sheep,
or stop a stampede that might still occur because of the
tempest.
But the frightened animals, led by the dogs
and pushed forward by the woman on foot and the man on horseback,
kept running towards safety. They went into the pen jostling each
other in terror, leaping, running, and huddled together under the
roof, their tails turned towards the rain.
Hester closed the pen and looked towards
John, taking her hair, heavy with rain, away from her face with
both hands. She had no time to say anything before lightning struck
a tree so near him that this horse rose on its hind legs in
fear.
John had been about to dismount, and had not
expected the sudden movement. He was thrown off in a curve and feel
heavily on the ground, his head striking a flat rock.
Hester screamed and ran to kneel next to him.
There was blood coming from a gash on his head, and he was
unconscious, but he wasn't dead. She looked around in despair, but
there was no one outside to help her. She thought she might run to
get the drunkard, or Abby, but then she suddenly just took John's
arms and began to drag him towards the house with enormous strength
for a slim woman.
Halfway through her progress she heard Abby's
voice through the storm and saw that the cook was running out to
help her. Together they managed to pull John through the threshold.
They were breathless as they pulled him before the fire in the
parlor -- a man like him could weigh a great deal. Hester got on
her knees, holding a cloth to his head to staunch the flow of
blood.
She inspected the wound by the light of the
candles -- his skull was not broken, there was only a gash; it
would bleed until it clotted. She opened John's lids and saw that
though he was unconscious, his pupils were responsive. Hester knew
the signs of danger after a fall from having lived in a farm, where
accidents often happened.
"Help me drag him to his room," she
asked."There is a fire there. He is in no danger of life, but I
must clean the wound and keep pressing a cloth to it."
Abby did not demur, she helped Hester and
they got John to his bed. There was, of course, nothing of a man's
body that Abby had not seen and, though a virgin, Hester did not
seem to have much maidenly modesty. The two women managed to take
off John’s wet clothes and dry him, covering him with a sheet and
blanket.
Abby went to get boiled water and brought it
with a fresh cloth for Hester to clean the wound. She stood by the
foot of the bed, watching as the other woman parted John's hair
almost with tenderness and dabbed at the blood.
"Thank you," Hester said in a sharp voice,
"you can go now. I will tend to him."
Abby threw her a look, wondering if Master
John would want to be in Hester's hands while unconscious, but she
knew the woman would take good care of him, and she did not need a
storm inside the house, as well as outside.
She left the room and closed the door. Hester
stood up and locked it after a moment, when she thought Abby would
not hear the key turning. She had started to shiver in her wet
clothes, and removed them, standing only in her wet
undergarments.
Sitting next to John, she kept dipping the
cloth in water, wringing it, and holding it against his head.
The blood still ran down his cheek, but in a
rivulet now. It would soon stop. She looked at his face; she had
never seen him sleeping before. He was always so alert.
She started to stretch out alongside him. He
wouldn't know she was there, because he wouldn't wake up for a
while. She put her head next to his on the pillow, still holding
the cloth to his head. She could feel his heat, which seemed much
more intense now that he was naked. Her breasts strained against
his arm, and her leg went over his as if it had a will of its
own.
Hester nuzzled his face with her nose,
pressing the spot between her legs against his hip. She had a
sensation of need and pleasure that she had known on her own, but
it was much more powerful now. Now it was taking over her as
nothing ever had.
She felt a greed for him, but he was
unconscious, asleep. Her tongue came out of her mouth, and lapped
at his blood.
Half of her wanted him to stay unconscious,
and the other half wished violently that he would awaken, and that
he would want her as much as she wanted him.
John had understood that Hester wanted
him.
He knew that she had probably never been with
a man, but that she was being overwhelmed by her own desire, and he
understood it was the reason she had decided to work for him and
live on his land. He thought that she knew this herself, and had
come to his house in the same deliberate way she did everything
else.
In the month after she had arrived and,
admittedly, been able to help him accomplish more things than he
had thought possible with her knowledge, hard work and
perseverance, he had become grateful to her.
Yet, her proximity had begun to disturb him,
as the proximity of an attractive woman would disturb any man, even
a man deeply in love. It was all the worse because he could tell
that her sensuality would be wild -- and silent.
She probably knew that she was appealing to a
darkness in him that was difficult to control, or constantly watch
over. It took only a moment to lose one's head, after having kept
it ten thousand other moments.
He had been able to successfully avoid her,
but since the day of the storm, when he had fallen off his horse
and she and Abby had nursed him, she had become bolder. She
followed him constantly with her eyes, and stood too close to him
when they inspected the crops or the books. He could see her almost
undulating like a serpent inside the house, as she tried to find
any excuse to go near him, to bring his dish, or take it away to
the kitchen, or pour his wine, even though Abby was there to serve
them.
She did not have the innocence that Georgiana
had had, years ago, when he had first kissed her. Georgiana's
sensuality had been an entirely different thing, radiant and
unaware of itself. She had not known what she was feeling, and she
certainly had not known what a man might be thinking or wanting.
Georgiana had been playful in her ignorance, teasing him, wanting
him without knowing what she wanted, or what she was provoking. She
had been a joy and a tender torment to him.
This woman was an entirely different thing.
He had met brazen ladies before, ladies who were usually married,
bored and vocal about what they wanted. Hester was not like them.
He suspected that her nature was so passionate that it gave her no
respite, but she was not an innocent as Georgiana had been. She
knew, as a woman who deals with the land always knows, what was
meant to happen between people, she knew that she was deliberately
provoking him. She wanted him to be brutal to her and match the
violence that she had inside.
If he threw her on the bed and used her she
wouldn't demur, she wouldn't hide, all of her would be there to
meet him. He knew she wouldn't regret it the next day, or cry, or
pretend that she had not understood what might happen. She would
just want more of him in her relentless way.
But John was a strong man, and he knew what
he wanted. He wanted Georgiana, and had wanted nothing but her for
years. To give in to this woman, even once, would forever lose him
what he loved the most: he could not, having the slightest heart
and some honor, deflower Hester and then send her away to a destiny
that would be uncertain at best, and tragic at worst. He could not
do that to any woman, not if one day he were to be with
Georgiana.
Hester was trying to pull him to some private
hell of hers, a place from which he would not easily emerge.
And yet there she was, day after day,
standing close to him, following him, looking at him.
"Don't stand so near me," he snapped at her
during supper, when she had leaned over him to get his plate.
She took a step back, staring with her black
sorceress’ eyes. "I beg your pardon!" she said, with the sudden
politeness of a gentleman's daughter.
They were alone in his house, as it was
Abby's day of rest and she had gone to town. John stood up abruptly
and Hester did not move, but he could see that her eyes, which
hardly ever blinked, had flinched a little.
"Don't be always so near me," he repeated.
"You are an unmarried woman working with a man and living on his
land."
She felt no apparent shame. "I have told you
before I don't care about scandal."
"It's not the scandal," he said. "You know
exactly what I am talking about."
Hester, as always, was troubled by his
height, his body, by the heat emanating from him. She had been
watching his hands all evening, his elegant, powerful hands, and
she craved to have them on her.
Even as he told her to move away from him,
she had begun to slink along the walls, her palms against the
stone, to stand right underneath him, with her face turned up to
his as if they were already lying in bed. She said, "I don't care
about any of it!"
"Well, I do!" he said.
He turned his back on her and would have
walked away, but she suddenly couldn't help herself. "What is the
use?"
He stopped at the door and she could see his
profile, the anger already on his face. She had no fear of his
rage.
"What is the use of you waiting for her? She
will have a child soon, and that child will be the Earl. Don't you
know that after that everything will become impossible? She will
have to do her duty by the child, forever, after Hugh dies too --
if he even dies before her."
He had now fully turned towards her.
"What do you know of anything?" he asked in a
low voice.
She smiled. "I know a great deal. I know that
after she came back from being with
bandits
he
waited till he saw that she had conceived no child, then he sent
everyone away -- everyone, except me, because I was almost a
servant -- and then he did nothing but make love to his wife."
She saw his expression, and knew that in
another moment he would be capable of murder, but she didn't
stop.
"He went to her room every night. I heard
them! He is determined to get her with child, and he is enjoying
it. You should see how he takes her arm and kisses her on the
shoulder, almost in front of everyone! You should see –"
Hester couldn't continue because John took a
step forward and, grabbing the edge of the heavy wooden table, he
threw it across the room. The table flew against the window pane,
breaking it. The high evening wind could now be heard howling
outside, and it moved his hair as he approached her.
"
You dare say that to me!
"
She put her back against the wall and for a
moment she thought that he would beat her, or try to strangle her.
Even that she would take, because he wasn't a man who could use
violence against a woman and not regret it. She just wanted his
hands.
But he only put them on either side of her as
he visibly took hold of himself and said, "I don't want to throw
you out because you have nowhere to go, and something very bad
would happen to you. But you will stay the hell away from me. And
you will never talk about Georgiana." He bent his face sideways, as
if to make sure they were really looking into each other's eyes,
and that she understood him. "You will be quiet, and modest, or I
will make you sorry, and not in the way you are hoping!"
He backed away from her and left the room.
She heard the front door opening and closing, and not long after
she heard his horse thundering by.
And still she did not despair.
"But do you love him?" Georgiana asked
Cecily.
Hugh frowned impatiently, "What does that
have to do with anything? A man with four thousand a year, a solid
family that I would not hesitate to connect myself to… I think it
will be enough if she likes him!"
Cecily was blushing but she smiled, taking
Georgiana's hand, "I like him!"
Georgiana knew it was a lie. Mr. Burke
doubled Cecily in age, and he was already an old man in demeanor,
fussy about his food and the temperature of the room, and fond of
droning on about ships and agricultural machinery.
Cecily wanted to do what was expected of her,
and not be a burden to Georgiana anymore. And Georgiana did not
want either of her younger sisters to be sacrificed as she had
been. There would have been no point to what she had done, what she
still had to bear, if Cecily and Dotty were to know the same fate
as she – with men less attractive than Hugh, who with his fair
complexion and lean frame could still seem dashing to girls easily
blinded by an Earldom, like Bess.
Hugh wanted to get rid of two problems and
did not understand what the fuss was about; Cecily had received a
wonderful proposal which could not, must not be refused.
But there was Georgiana soulfully looking
into her sister's silly romantic eyes and asking her if she felt
any love.
He stood up impatiently, "I expect this
proposal to be accepted, and soon!" he said, walking out with the
large Dalmatians that went everywhere with him when he was at
Halford.