Devotion (3 page)

Silence filled the room, interrupted only by the brief, pitiful sob of Maria's mother. Still, Maria refused to lower her eyes. "I read, Your Grace, thanks to my brother." She smiled. "When we were much younger we would hide away in the forest and he would teach me all that our father had taught him throughout the day. He taught me to write as well. And cipher. Your Grace, I do very well with children."

"I'm less concerned with that than I am with the caretaking of one's heart and soul, Miss Ashton."

"I won't allow it," railed the vicar again, his big hands fisted in his parish cloak and his wide face going purple.
" 'Tis
a world of sin and corruption, Your Grace. Look at her. An object of temptation, she is, with as willful and decadent a soul as you'll find. '
Twould
do no good to unleash her sort of wickedness on the world."

"I was speaking to the girl," interrupted the duchess, her gaze still locked on Maria. "You're very young and beautiful. Obviously, you have little experience outside the boundaries of this village. I fear you would use this position as a means of escaping your obvious . . . predicament."

She had nothing to say to that because, in a manner, it was true. When applying for the position she had had no thought of philanthropy in her mind.

Almost wearily, the duchess discarded Maria's letter into her assistant's hand, then she unsteadily left the chair. The physician hurried to her side, wrapped one arm gently around her thin shoulders, offering support. The duchess stood motionless for a moment, as if uncertain of her strength, her jeweled fingers working nervously in the folds of her velvet skirts. When her eyes returned to Maria, however, they were gray as flint and just as sharp.

"I'll expect you at Thorn Rose at the end of the week. Mr.
Thackley
will see to the arrangements."

"I beg your pardon," Maria cried softly, her surprise evident. "Do I understand correctly, Your Grace? Have you offered me the position?"

"Obviously."
Anticipating the vicar's outburst, the duchess turned to face Maria's father.
"As for you.
We'll speak privately before I leave."

As if in a trance, ignoring the heated exchanges between her father and the duchess, Maria moved toward the door, gasping slightly as her mother's hand came up suddenly to fiercely snatch her arm and stop her. Those normally dull, dead eyes now glittered; that usually blank face reflected desperation and fear.

"Would you desert me?" Mary cried in her hoarse, desperately unhappy voice. "Would you abandon me here
alone
to live with him? Oh, God, first Paul and now you. What shall I do?
What shall I do?"

Maria peeled her mother's fingers from her arm then fled the rectory, refusing to look back as she ran, with the bitter wind stinging her face and fingers, down the winding, cobblestone pathway through the cemetery to her brother's grave. She dropped onto it, leaned back against the cold, hard headstone, drew her knees up to her chest, and buried her face into them. Again and again her mother's anguished face rose up before her—the pleas, the tears—always when Maria showed any signs of escaping.

"Maria,"
came
the soft voice from the fog. As Maria looked up, the figure she had dreaded most to see came toward her, scattering mist, his clergy's collar shimmering white in the dull day.

"Go away," she called. "My father may well come looking for me. He won't look kindly on his prized curate associating with such a fallen soul as me."

"Maria," John Rees said, and dropped to one knee beside her. His slender hands caught her face. His kind, searching brown eyes regarded her intensely. "Tell me what I've just heard is untrue—that you plan to leave us. Tell me that you intend to turn down Her Grace's offer—"

"Nay, I shall not, John Rees! Not for my mother's sake. Not for you. I'm leaving here, John, and I shan't return until I'm capable of providing my mother a refuge from my father."

"Then marry me, Maria. I beg you! I've commissioned the archbishop for my own rectory. We'll take your mother with us—"

"Nay, I won't allow you to suffer by his hand as I and my family have. I care for you too much."

He grabbed her in his arms, pressed his lips to her forehead, and lingered there, stroking her fallen hair with one hand. "I'll speak to your father about us."

"No!"

"He would bless our marriage, I'm certain of it."

"He would pray for your soul, John, and see you cast from the church." She pulled away suddenly, causing her hair to cascade over her shoulders, to form a waving, curling triangle around her face. Her skirt brushing the flowers from her brother's grave, she sat back on her heels and stared at her father's young assistant, who regarded her with something just short of worship.

"Do you truly love me, John Rees?" she asked.
"Aye.
I've loved you since the night I moved into your father's house. You were no more than a child and I . . . suddenly found my passion for God battling with my passion for you. I've seen how he treats you and your mother. I saw him turn his back on his only son—"

"Yet you did nothing to stop him because you fear him as much as the rest of us. You would do nothing to jeopardize your position with the church, because if he truly is appointed bishop then you yourself will rise to his place as parish vicar. 'Tis that part of you that frightens me, John Rees. I fear you are too much like my father."

"What do I have to do to convince you that I love you more than anyone—
"

"Nay, not more than God!
More than the almighty God, sir?
Need my father remind you that
he who
loveth
father or mother, or wife, or sister, or brethren more than God is not worthy of heaven?"

For an instant, John looked thunderstruck. His hands fisted and buried in his flowing surplice and cassock. Confusion furrowed his brow.

Narrowing her eyes, Maria leaned toward him. "Kiss me," she whispered. "Nay, not on my brow, I'm not a child any longer, John.
My lips, John.
Kiss my lips. I'm nineteen and have never been kissed. Not by you. Not by anyone. And do you know why?
Because there isn't a solitary man in this village who would risk my father's wrath.
Not you because, despite what your body feels, your heart belongs to God."

He turned his face away, and his eyes downcast.

"Would you turn away from me on our wedding night?" she demanded. She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her breast.

John gasped and tensed. His gaze flew back to her face, then to his hand which she held fiercely upon the fullest part of her bosom.

Her lids growing drowsy, her breath quickening, Maria smiled. "Is this not a part of love, John?
The giving of one's body, as well as their soul?"

He made a choked sound in his throat, and his eyes brightened with a sort of light that made his expression one of fiery pain. Then he pulled his hand away.

"God have mercy," he said shakily, and pressed his fingers to his eyes, as if to block out the image of her, her riotous hair tumbling and drifting in the rising breeze, brushing lightly over her breasts that pressed almost brazenly against the too-tight bodice of her child's dress, despite the fact that she was forced, by her father, to bind her chest to alleviate her "appearance of flagrant wantonness."

Sinking back on Paul's grave, Maria turned away, the heat of his hand still burning her breast while the cold air and desolation sent shivers down her spine.

"Nay, I could never marry you," she declared wearily, her eyes filling with tears that spilled down her cheeks. "Mayhap my father is right. I was spawned of lust and am therefore doomed to a life of licentiousness. Nay, I could never make you a goodly wife, John Rees . . . any more than you could make me a proper husband."

Chapter One

Thorn Rose Manor

Haworth, Yorkshire, England

1805

Maria tried not to think about the odd looks she had received from the folk in Haworth the moment she announced that she would be employed at Thorn Rose Manor—companioning the Duchess of Salterdon's young grandson. Surely, the expressions of consternation (and sympathy?) were nothing more than her own imagination, which, on occasion throughout her life, had proven to be the stem of a great deal of trouble. Had her father not vowed that such "dream worlds" that she concocted were machinations of Satan? And that inevitably she would find herself sucked into the demon pits of unreality to languish forever?

Balderdash! The only
demon pit of unreality
she had ever been sucked into was her own father's house and his fist-flailing Sunday sermons.

The road from Haworth entered a valley, at the bottom of which sprawled a striking, awe-inspiring building, entrancingly luminous under winter's clear dusk sky. The structure was a hodgepodge of architecture, with deliriously sloping roofs and many-sided towers, whose sharp and steeple-like pinnacles speared the horizon dramatically. Her head and shoulders thrust through the window of the coach, Maria blinked away the icy sting of cold and stared in disbelief at the imposing manor she would, very soon now, call home.

What had she expected? Mayhap some grim, ancient rock of a country home with bleak, lifeless windows! Not this . . . magnificence—this . . . palace, set amid stark gray hills that heaved up round the horizon. She could well understand now why the duchess's eyes had shone so when she spoke of Thorn Rose Manor.
As far as her eye could see stretched artificial lakes, bridges, and formal Renaissance gardens.
There were towering filigreed spires and massive walls of stained glass that reflected the failing sunlight in streaks of blues, greens, and
golds
. Her father would decry it, of course. Pronounce its
ostentatiousness
fit only for the gluttonous appetite of the affluent—who were undoubtedly doomed to eternal hell for reveling in their wanton opulence.

Oh, yes, Maria could appreciate the fondness she had witnessed in the duchess's eyes. What she had not understood, however, was why those steely eyes had grown so dark and distressed when discussing her family—the lad—the obvious chink in the
grande
dame's aristocratic armor—the boy who resided here,
alone
but for the scattering of servants who occupied the domicile. The
lad
who, the duchess proclaimed, could prove to be difficult, at times stubborn, angry, belligerent—obviously in need of patience, tenderness, and understanding. Was Maria up to it?

Of course I am
,
she told herself with a lingering shudder of doubt. She would dance with the devil himself before returning to her father's house! She would
bed
the devil himself if it meant acquiring the finances somehow to get her mother away from the vicar's unseemly influence—before it was too late.

The coachman deposited Maria and her single valise on the manor steps, tapped his hat brim with one finger, and murmured something about "the lunatic" and "how many of ye
comin
' and
goin's
it
gonna
tek
afore they
finerlly
put it away."

"I beg your pardon?" she cried as he cracked a whip over the pair's massive croups,
then
watched as the conveyance lumbered down the potted drive. For an instant she considered running after it; then, drawing back her shoulders, said aloud, "You've come this far, lass; there's no turning back now."

Still . . .

She looked up, up the formidable ancient walls that were littered with brown ivy. The windows were dark, and growing darker as the sun slid beyond the purple horizon.