Lucien's Fall Read online

  "I fervently hope I never taste such freedom." The primness in her voice annoyed her. "Come—send your men away."

  "They’ve already been paid," he said. "Consider it a gift. I’ll count the kiss I stole just now as payment enough, unless you choose to pay more." He looked at her, full on, deeply and intensely.

  It took extreme effort to say calmly, "There will be no further payments, Lord Esher. I am going to marry Charles, and that is that. You waste your time."

  He did not argue. "Very well, then. Consider it my pleasure, a tribute to the gardens that were destroyed in my youth."

  Madeline nodded. "Thank you."

  He did not reply, only stared out the window with a rigidness on his spine, the paper on the hearth smoking in black curls.

  She fled, running down the hall as if a devil nipped at her heels. There was no clear thought in her mind at first, only a sense that she desired sanctuary. The maze—no, it was marred with Lord Esher’s laconic teasing yesterday. And in the greenhouse, she’d think of his thumb on her lips, and in the rose garden, the tearing petals of the flowers against his mouth.

  Even the library—that dim and musty retreat—was marred with his presence and the stain of sex.

  Oh, how had he so thoroughly invaded all her private places so quickly? There were none left where she might sit in silence and peace and consider what was to be done.

  Business first. She stopped outside and told the men to go ahead with their work. She gave explicit directions to the headman and let him know she would check on him in an hour—men were notorious for ignoring the orders of women.

  As she came back toward the house, she saw Juliette and Anna on the veranda, having breakfast below their parasols. They were dressed for riding.

  Juliette called out to her, "Madeline, join us, darling!"

  Reluctantly, Madeline wandered toward them. Jonathan, coming out from a side door, joined her. He, too, was dressed for riding.

  What a handsome man he was, she thought, vaguely; though that blond noble look was not at all to her tastes, his strong nose and sensual mouth were quite appealing. "Good morning, Lady Madeline," he said cheerfully, offering his arm. "Are you not going to join our ride?"

  "I’d not heard anything of it."

  "Oh, yes," Juliette cried. "We’re going to escape all the workmen’s hammering. I’ve had a picnic prepared. You must come, my dear."

  Madeline shrugged. Lord Esher was nowhere in sight and had showed no signs of going anywhere when she was in his room a few minutes ago. She’d rather ride with this trio than be here in the house with him lurking about. "I’ll go change."

  "My dear," Juliette said, standing to come around the table. "What have you done to your neck?"

  A bolt of guilt slammed through Madeline, but she managed to frown—convincingly, she hoped—and touched the front of her throat. "My neck?"

  Unerringly, Juliette brushed her closed fan over the exact place where Lucien’s mouth had fallen only a little while ago. "Here."

  Madeline affected guilelessness, brushing the back of her fingers over the place. "I’ve no idea. It doesn’t hurt."

  "Perhaps your marquess was more than a little enthusiastic in saying good-bye yesterday, hmm?" Jonathan suggested lazily.

  Now Madeline blushed, for it was plain by the bright, knowing look in his eye that he knew exactly where she’d received the mark on her neck—and she remembered his room was next to Lord Esher’s. She had presumed he was with Juliette, but perhaps she was wrong. "Charles is a gentleman," she said softly.

  "But even gentlemen can be passionate." Juliette beamed. "Is it he who sent all these workmen, my sweet?"

  Madeline shot a quick look at Jonathan, who spread jam on a thick slice of bread. His eyes glittered. "Yes," Madeline said. "He sent quite a kind note, as well, and said he will return to Whitethorn in a fortnight."

  "Wonderful!" Juliette kissed her head. "Go and change and we’ll go riding."

  * * *

  To her dismay, Lord Esher joined them after all. When Madeline had changed and met the little party at the stables, he was already mounted and ready, looking off into the distance with an expression of boredom as Juliette and the servant woman dithered over how much wine to take. He spared a single glance for Madeline when she came up, but she ignored him, self-consciously adjusting the gauzy fichu she wore to cover the pinkish bruise he’d left on her neck.

  Lady Heath was the one who commented on Lucien’s appearance. "My goodness, Lord Esher," she said lightly, "did you spend the night brawling?"

  Lucien lifted his eyes blandly. "After a fashion."

  Madeline saw that he’d changed his clothes, but they were carelessly donned—his waistcoat loose, the neck of his shirt open, the lace jabot hanging carelessly to either side. His jaw was unshaved.

  "Leave him alone, Anna," Jonathan said lightly, riding flirtatiously nearby her. "He fancies himself a doomed sort. The ladies in London find it ever so appealing to try to save him."

  "I can well imagine," Juliette said in warm approval, staring boldly at Lucien.

  He ignored her.

  Brightly, Juliette said, "Shall we?"

  They rode toward a hilly ground covered with thick woods, where small meadows opened here and there. The ruins of a castle crowned a hill a few miles ride from the house, and Madeline knew they would picnic there. It was one of Juliette’s favorite places.

  Juliette rode in the lead. She was an accomplished rider, and her mount displayed her treasures to perfection, her good posture, her abundant bosom, her glorious skin. Just behind her rode Jonathan and Lady Heath, riding two by two. There was, Madeline thought, a considerable flirtation going on there, though she couldn’t decide which of them had instigated it.

  Lord Esher rode beside Madeline without speaking. In spite of what Jonathan had said about his donning a doomed attitude for effect, she thought he looked rather grim. "Are you feeling better today?" she asked politely.

  "Better?" He lifted a shoulder. "Oh, yes. Yes, whatever it is that’s in that potion of your cook’s is quite effective."

  "Probably opium!" Madeline laughed. "She’s a great believer in numbing all pain."

  Juliette looked over her shoulder at the sound of Madeline’s laughter. "Oh, Lucien," she called, "do ride up here and keep me company."

  As if bored beyond expression, he nodded at her. "Excuse me." He rode up next to Juliette and murmured something that made Juliette laugh throatily. A sharp, hot pluck of jealously ripped through Madeline’s stomach.

  And that in itself was alarming. Jealous? What did she think to gain from Lucien Harrow besides sorrow and disgrace?

  There is great freedom in disgrace, he’d said this morning. And as he rode in the bright morning, his hair gleaming down his back, his jaw unshaven because it suited him, his disdain for all of them thick as honey, she thought she caught a glimmer of what that meant.

  It frightened her that she could even begin to understand it.

  Lucien stuck close to Juliette all afternoon, laughing at her jokes, teasing her with bawdy double entendres. She laughed a bit too brightly, her eyes, though she tried not to show it, stayed on Jonathan and Anna, drinking a wine from the bottle as they viewed the world from a high perch on the tower wall.

  Madeline viewed them all with a cynicism Lucien would not have expected from her, but then, he supposed she’d grown up with such love affairs brewing around her all the time. After they ate, she ambled off by herself, and he glimpsed her through the openings in the broken castle walls, picking wildflowers. She shed her cap, and her hair streamed over her shoulders in disarray, down her back and to her hips. She thought herself unobserved, he knew. Once he saw her absently touch the side of her neck, the place where he’d bruised her, She didn’t know that she looked as if she’d been well and thoroughly loved, her lips bruised and swollen, her jaw scraped by his beard, that mark, red and raw, on her neck. He couldn’t look at her without getting hard, and avoided her altogether in Juli
ette’s presence. She’d see what he tried to hide, and the game would be finished.

  Anna and Jonathan disappeared, and Juliette grew fretful, though she tried not to show it. Brightly, she suggested to Lucien that they walk along one of the paths that led into the forest from the castle. Under other circumstances, Lucien might have been somewhat leery of the invitation, for he had no wish to bed her, and he might have suspected some sort of ploy in that direction. Today, however, he knew she sought Jonathan and Anna, to thwart whatever dalliance they planned.

  "’What about Madeline?" he asked.

  "Oh, she’s out there dreaming of her marquess. They’re going to be married, you know."

  "Ah!" he replied dryly. "No, I hadn’t heard. How wonderful for them."

  "It’s plain you share my love of marriage," she countered, ducking under the low arm of a tree. "But your father must be nearing his seventieth birthday. He must be concerned that you’ll need to produce an heir?"

  Lucien smiled bitterly. "Oh, yes, it worries him greatly. And thus I avoid the very thing he wishes."

  "You sound as if you hate him."

  "Hate is too strong—it implies some level of concern. I take joy in shaming my father, but I do not hate him. He’s below my notice."

  "But why?"

  Lucien lifted his chin, thinking of the beatings his father had administered when Lucien returned from Vienna. "It’s completely mutual, I assure you. I am a great and terrible disappointment to him, as he is to me. If I were not his only son, he’d take pleasure in disinheriting me." He smiled. "Unfortunately for my father, the estate would pass to my cousin, and my father hates him more than me."

  There came through the trees a sound of high feminine laughter. Juliette went rigid beside him, and he saw by the movement of her bosom that she was extremely agitated. He took her arm. "Perhaps we should return."

  She hesitated. The voices came closer. With a quick movement, Juliette shoved Lucien against a tree and kissed him.

  It infuriated Lucien, and he shoved her away before Lady Heath and Jonathan broke through on the path. He narrowed his eyes at her, seeing her misery as Jonathan entered the tiny clearing. Her eyes leaped upon him as if he were some magnificent feast and she only an orphan, peering in the windows. For one brief instant, Lucien felt sorry for her.

  The moment passed, for on Jonathan’s face was a rare expression of rage. He attempted to hide it, but a thin white line edged his nostrils and his pale eyes went nearly black with enlarged pupils. A hard red flush burned on his cheeks. Lucien regarded him steadily, hoping he’d see what was plain—it was only a ploy to make him jealous, and meant nothing.

  Instead, Jonathan turned to Juliette and took her hand summarily. "You’ll excuse us," he said, and stormed into the underbrush, dragging Juliette behind him.

  In the stunned silence they left behind, Anna lifted an eyebrow in Lucien’s direction. "Where have I seen that mad jealousy before?"

  Lucien didn’t even spare her a glance. Without a word, he turned and went back the way he’d come.

  * * *

  Juliette stumbled behind Jonathan, a little frightened but much more aroused by his anger. He nearly yanked her arm from her socket, and she stumbled twice when her skirts tangled in the branches. By the time he stopped, she was aflush and ready for him. She smiled up at him, lifting her arms to put them around his neck. "Did you like that?" she said.

  "Yes," he said on a growl, and kissed her, hard, his lips punishing. But instead of taking her against the tree as she had anticipated, he only lifted his head. "Juliette, why do you toy with me this way? Why must you torture me to find any pleasure in the act?"

  "That is not so!" she protested.

  "No?" He lifted his head, and light cascaded like a gilded waterfall over the beautiful planes of his face. "Then come to me tonight as an ordinary woman. Or let me come to you as a husband might come to a wife. No ropes or drunkenness or torn clothing—just the pair of us, naked and alone with each other."

  Her knees softened at the notion, at the visual picture that assailed her just then, of Jonathan naked against the moonlight in her room. She shoved him away. "I don’t wish to make love like a wife."

  He moved away from her, his face aloof. "Then fuck someone else."

  He turned to go.

  "Wait!" she said. "All right! I’ll come to you like a wife then, if you take me now."

  Slowly, he shook his head. A tiny, knowing smile touched his mouth. "Not now," he said. "Later. Come to me as a wife."

  And Juliette, who’d never done a man’s bidding in her life, nodded slowly, helplessly.

  She hoped she was not falling in love. That could be rather messy.

  Chapter Ten

  Now cold as ice am I, now hot as fire,

  I dare not tell myself my own desire.

  ~ John Dryden

  Madeline returned to the castle ruins to find everyone else gone. Not that she minded. The crosscurrents between them were like thick, slow-moving tides, pulling this way and pushing that. Jonathan and Juliette seemed to delight in strange tortures of the other, but now was added the knife-edged sharpness of Lady Heath’s tongue, which was, as often as not, directed at Lucien.

  The tumbles of stone on the hilltop were the ruins of a twelfth-century Norman castle. All that remained were two walls and a tower. Within the tower was a circling staircase that was yet strong and sturdy, and rose to its original height, perfectly intact. A single wall, crumbling and dotted with former embrasures at various floor levels, led up to it on one side. On the other side, the wall had long since fallen. Madeline ducked into the cool shade of the tower and climbed the stairs to the top. The wood floor had rotted, but there was a thick rim of stone on the topmost floor, wide enough for a body to stand and admire the surrounding landscape. As a girl, she’d often ridden here to play princess and knight. The memory made her smile.

  Gingerly, she walked the stone rim toward her destination, a stone seat carved from the wall, made smooth by centuries of rear ends. It looked over the surrounding meadows and forests, to the thin bluish ribbon of the river. Softly rolling ground undulated back toward Whitethorn. Madeline breathed deeply, admiring the view, thinking of all the animals housed in those trees. The sun was warm on her face, the world silent, though she could hear the distant echo of laughter. Far below, the horses were hobbled in the dappled shade beneath a copse of trees. Their tails switched lazily at stray flies.

  A whistle broke the stillness and Madeline glanced over her shoulder, disappointed that her private moment should come so quickly to an end. Her heart gave a quick, hard beat, for it was Lord Esher coming out of the trees, looking more rakish than ever.

  As he neared the ruins, he lifted a hand at her. Madeline waved back. He stopped at the foot of the long wall that sloped upward to the tower, its topmost edge a capricious straight line high in the air. Lucien eyed it, then shed his coat and leaped nimbly atop the lower edge of the slope.

  Madeline leaned over the embrasure. "Lord Esher, take the stairs in the tower. That wall is rotten."

  A crooked half-smile lit his face. He found his balance on the wall. Slowly he walked toward her. Most of it was a gentle slope upward, but the few yards were a hard climb—Madeline knew, for she’d done it as a girl and been petrified—over jutting stone held in place only by crumbling mortar.

  Lucien tackled it boldly, seeking purchase with his hands and feet. Once he stepped hard on a stone and it crumbled, nearly taking him with it. It skittered out from under him and his body swung out with it. Only sheer luck gave him help. At the last possible instant, he caught hold of stone yet firmly mortared in the wall.

  Madeline slapped her hands over her mouth to catch her scream. His feet dangled in the open air, his body tilting at a mad angle as he looked for a better grip with his hands. The stone that had come loose hit the piles of crumbled rock below with a thudding crash, and Madeline gave a sharp cry. Briefly and cowardly, she closed her eyes.

  When she op
ened them again, he had somehow managed to regain his balance, but rather than retreat, Lucien simply steadied himself and moved forward once more. With her breath held back in her throat, Madeline watched as he topped the highest portion of the wall, standing alone sixty feet in the air. He rested there a moment, gazing around him in obvious enjoyment. "It’s rather magnificent," he said to Madeline.

  "Yes" She gripped the edge of the wall. Small dusty rocks bit her fingers. "Do take care! I wish you’d climbed the stairs."

  He seemed not at all bothered by the great height, but sat comfortably on the broad wall, feet dangling down on either side. He looked at her, his eyes a hard bright blue in the sunny afternoon. "Have you never climbed the wall?"

  "Only as a child, but I didn’t truly understand the danger then."

  "But ’tis the danger that makes it so thrilling." With a sudden, graceful move, he shifted his feet and cautiously, confidently stood.

  A hard pain stabbed her. She covered her mouth with both her hands to keep from gasping or screaming.

  "Shall I run to you?" he said, that crooked smile devilish.

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  "Perhaps walking is enough," he said agreeably. There were perhaps three yards of high wall between him and Madeline. He stood a moment with his arms outstretched, his chin up as if scenting the air. A slight breeze ruffled his full white shirtsleeves and lifted a lock of dark hair on his shoulder. His feet were one in front of the other in the scuffed boots.

  And he began to walk, swinging one foot out and around and putting it down, and then the next, and the next, just so. Madeline’s chest hurt with watching, but she could not stop. She feared with some illogical part of herself that she must keep her eyes on him or he’d fall to his death.

  One booted toe kicked a loose stone, and it dislodged without a sound, breaking free to tumble down, down, down. The sudden movement threw Lord Esher off balance and he suddenly squatted, grabbing the wall for a moment. There still was no fear on his face, only a wild light of joy. He stood up again and lightly dance-walked the rest of the way to the tower. He leaped nimbly to the stone ledge and walked toward her.