Joan Smith (9 page)

“Why have I not seen you before, Miss Comstock?” he asked. His intimate smile made it the grandest compliment she had ever received.

With the safety of her uncle by her side, she replied, “You have seen me often, sir. In fact, your curricle splashed mud on my skirt not a month ago, in Lyndhurst. You were driving much too quickly!” she chided.

“It is my way to proceed a little more quickly than society likes,” he said. His smile gave the words a world of meaning. “If you will give me the opportunity, I shall apologize, and even buy you a new..." He gave a diffident little laugh. “But that would be farouche. Shall I be farouche? No,” he said, glancing unconcernedly at Sir Giles, “I think not. You will save me a set of waltzes, Miss Comstock?”

“I don’t waltz, sir."

“Ah! Then at least I shall not suffer the agony of seeing you in some other man's arms.”

“You
are
fast, Lord Raventhorpe,” Arabella said, trying to maintain her dignity, but an encouraging smile peeped out.

“We have already discussed that, ma’am. Let us not reheat old news. We can—and shall—find more interesting things to talk about—like your sweet self." He bowed and moved on to shake William's hand, while Arabella stood, feeling as if she had grown up from a girl to a lady in those two minutes.

Uncle Throckley whispered in her ear, “You don’t want to have much to do with young Raventhorpe. He’s a bad ‘un.”

It was already too late. The arrow had hit its mark. The rout party proceeded apace, but while Arabella performed the stately minuet with William, her mind and her heart were with Raventhorpe. It stung like a nettle to see him flirting his head off with Miss Summers. He ignored Arabella for three quarters of the evening. He had the cotillion with Amy Peters, the romping country dance with Mary Holmes, and by suppertime, Arabella was so angry, she planned to refuse when—if—he asked her to dance.

He took Mary Holmes in to supper, but positioned himself in such a manner that he could, and did, observe Arabella throughout. She would look up from her lobster patties to see his dark eyes studying her. On his face was a small, patient smile, which told her he was biding his time.

When he came directly to her after supper, her anger had transmuted to a wild excitement. “You’re angry with me” were his first words. “I am so glad. That means you care, a little.”

“I don’t care a brass farthing,” she retorted.

“Yes, you do. You should have feigned indifference if you wanted me to think otherwise. And I care that you care. I could not make it obvious that I am enchanted with you, or Sir Giles would lock you in your room. That would not stop me from seeing you, but it would be deuced awkward. I’d rather meet you in a less mischievous place than your boudoir. Shall we say, by the weir?”

She listened, with her heart pitter-pattering excitedly. “When did you have in mind? Not that I’ll be there.”

“After sunset would be best.”

“A dark night for dark deeds, sir?” she asked, with a flirtatious glance.

He smiled lazily. “Preferably a moonlit night. I want to be able to see you. You are something quite out of the ordinary, you know. Did anyone ever tell you, you have eyes like sapphires?”

“Several times.”

“I thought as much, which is why I shan’t bore you with a repetition. Your eyes are nothing like sapphires. Nor is your skin like marble or satin or a peach, nor your hair like gold silk. These vegetables and mineral comparisons are poor stuff when you come down to it.”

“Could you do better?”

“I could, but it takes a moonlit night to inspire me. Will you come to the weir after the party?”

“Certainly not.”

“Very well, but I shall be there, filling the lake with my tears. When Chêne Bay is ten feet underwater and the whole land flooded, then you’ll regret your cruelty, madam.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “You are too ridiculous, milord.”

“Beautiful ladies make fools of us all. I do believe it is why God invented you, to provide Himself a chuckle at man’s absurdity from time to time.” He spoke facetiously, but his eyes were anxious when he said, “Do come. You know perfectly well Sir Giles won’t welcome me at the house. He has been looking daggers at me all evening.”

“If your reputation is so black as that, I don’t think I ought to see you again,” she said, but she said it with an encouraging smile.

“It is not my reputation, but his son’s lack of address, that frightens him. If he ever let a real man next or nigh you, William would have no chance of attaching you.”

“William happens to be a very good friend of mine."

“That alone condemns him to ineligibility. A friend indeed! When did a young miss ever have the sense to marry a friend? When did a gentleman either, for that matter? I am not just denigrating your sex, Miss Comstock. No, what the ladies want is a corsair.”

“And what do the gentlemen want?”

“Oh, we are not fussy. We demand only beauty, breeding, a fortune—and enough reluctance on the lady’s part to let us fondly imagine we have won her over all odds, after she has landed us.”

“I shouldn’t think the reluctance would be hard to come by, if this is the way you carry on.”

Their conversation was frequently interrupted by the steps of the dance. It lent a certain piquancy to the conversation, having to wait for an answer. Arabella had time to wonder what Raventhorpe meant by intimating Sir Giles wished her to marry William. Sir Giles had never suggested a match between them. When she was swung back into Raventhorpe’s arms, he said, “Don’t leave me on the rack, you cruel woman. What is it to be? Will you meet me by the weir?”

“Not tonight,” she said.

“I plan to leave tomorrow.”

She gave a pouting shrug. "Then you are obviously not serious. Why should I risk my reputation for a man who is literally here tonight, gone tomorrow?”

“I shall return, Arabella. I will always return. I have been suborned into accompanying Mrs. Percival to Oldstead Abbey tomorrow, but it is only ten miles away. I would crawl on my knees, if necessary. I was quite serious about men’s absurdity you see.”

That night Arabella slipped out of the house after the household was asleep and met Raventhorpe by the weir. It was the first of many trysts.

As I finished a page, I flicked it aside and drew forward a blank sheet. Glancing up, I was astonished to see the welter of pages littering the table. Had I really written all that? It was my writing, but in my haste I had scrawled so badly, it was hard to read. I, who usually brooded over every sentence, had filled two dozen sheets. What time was it? I looked at my watch, and could hardly believe it was six-thirty.

Mollie would be returning soon, and I had not made a single plan for dinner. I’d have to serve eggs, which didn’t seem much reward for her help. The whole idea of Mollie coming seemed an intrusion. I would have to waste the evening entertaining her, when I wanted to continue with Arabella’s story. I was on thorns to see what I would write.

The phone jangled. When I picked up the receiver, Mollie said, “Hi, Belle. It’s me. How are things going?”

“Fine. Very well.”

“Good. What do you say you drive into Lyndhurst and meet me for a bite in town? I have to show a customer a house at eight o’clock. We could go to the cinema after, or have a couple of ales at the pub.”

“I’m busy, Mollie. I’d rather not tonight. You go ahead.”

“Will you be all right there alone after dark?” she asked.

“Yes, I'm fine. I don’t mind at all. It’s all right now.”

“No—ahem—visitors?” she asked archly.

“No visitors.”

“If you’re sure, I’ll show Duggan the house and be there around nine-thirty. I’ll stop by my place and pack a bag.”

I’d be written out by nine, and would be glad to have Mollie here overnight. It was selfish, but Arabella had become so important to me that I was willing to be selfish on her behalf. “That'll be fine, Mollie. Thanks a lot.”

“Ta ta for now, then.”

“‘Bye.” I hung up and went back to the table. In my wild burst of scribbling, I hadn’t kept the pages in any sort of order, but the most recently written ones should have been on top. What sat on top was the first page. I stared in disbelief. The page was vibrating slightly, as if a breeze were disturbing it, but there was no breeze. I felt a warmth at my back. Without turning, I knew he was there, in the room with me. I waited for fear to seize me, but felt only a rising excitement untouched by dread or fear.

Chapter Ten

Raventhorpe—Vanejul—my phantom lover—leaned over the scattered sheets of manuscript, and I trembled with joy. At first the vision was insubstantial, no more than the shimmering uncertainty of one’s own reflection seen in the window of a lighted room at night. As I stared, the apparition became more solid, until at last he looked completely normal, as if made of flesh and blood. His presence hardly seemed odd, after having spent the whole day with him in imaginings more vivid than any reality I had ever known.

The well-remembered sloeberry eyes, black and luminous, looked up from the page, smiling in pleasure at what I had written. “You are a little confused,” he said, “but then it was a long time ago. Sir Giles had the coming-out party in May, before her birthday. The trees had lost their blossoms by June.”

I had some idea how a naive, fifteen-year-old Belle had felt when she was first confronted with this overpowering presence. How excited she must have been by his handsome masculinity, how intimidated by his title and arrogance, and how flattered, withal, that he honored her with his attentions. I shared every atom of her excitement, and had to brace myself to meet him on an equal footing. I was no naive teenager raised in the nineteenth century. I didn’t need Vanejul. If what Mollie had said was true, he needed me, yet I felt an instinctive feminine urge to please him. This would not do!

“Then Arabella was only fourteen. Practically a child,” I said accusingly. It seemed ludicrous that this man should have been interested in a teenager. He looked to be in his early thirties—a man capable of dealing with Cleopatra, or the Queen of Sheba. Of course, he had been younger when he met Arabella. This must be the body he had when he died in Greece. The age looked right, and Greece’s climate could account for the swarthiness of his complexion.

“She was at the tag end of her fifteenth year. Older than Juliet,” he pointed out, not apologetically, but with an air of incipient annoyance. “Many young ladies married at fifteen or sixteen. This modern notion of delaying marriage a decade is unhealthy. Nature knows what she is about. To pitch two unchaperoned youngsters together, chockfull of raging hormones, and then express outrage when they do what comes naturally—it is blatant hypocrisy.”

I agreed, but did not say so. “The world has changed from your day, Vanejul.”

“Customs have changed, but not human nature. In any case, you traduce me to imply I was preying on a child. Arabella knew what she was about.”

“I didn’t mean to
imply
that. Anyway, it’s only a story.”

“If you’re going to tell our story, get it right,” he said boldly. “You’ll look nohow if you don’t even know when the trees blossom.”

“At home, they blossom in late May. They could still be in bloom in early June.”

“The tragedy didn’t happen in America,” he pointed out. “It happened here. Do more than just think how it might have been, Belle. You are a young woman. Put yourself in her head, feel what she felt,” he said persuasively.

His charm was working its spell. I must be careful with this man. “I am,” I replied. “I know exactly how she felt.”

“Really?” He gave a curious, disillusioned look. “And did she truly love me—ever?” He waited, gazing deeply into my eyes, with a hungry look about him.

“She was fascinated.”

His elegant hands moved in dissatisfaction. The carved emerald flashed. “Fascination is a fleeting sort of emotion, based on appearance, or inexperience, or a childish misconception that someone can fill a romantic need. One grows out of a mere fascination. I know she was fascinated. I asked you if she loved me,” he said brusquely.

“I don’t know her well enough yet. I have just begun the story.”

“I half dread to know the truth.”

He looked again at my manuscript. “This bit about my splashing her in my curricle. I wasn’t even driving the demmed thing. My tiger was. I told her that. You make me sound overbearing.”

A smile twitched at my lips. “Fancy that! I imagined a flaw in you, and here you thought you were perfect.”

He cocked his head to one side. I watched as a devastating smile stretched across his lips and lit his eyes. “Modesty never was my long suit. But then I hadn’t much to be modest about. Put that in your book, if you dare. Draw me warts and all—and Belle, too. Let posterity decide which of us is the villain of the piece.”

I should have despised that remark, but there is some charm in self-love, when it is lightened with humor. “I shall do my best. Any other complaints?”

His lifted his shapely hand, palm up, in a gesture of apology. “Forgive me. I am a savage, chiding you when you are kind enough to do this for me. I do appreciate it. I’ve waited so long...” He emitted a weary little sigh.

“I’m doing it for Arabella.”

“For both of us.” He nodded, satisfied to share the story with her.

It began to seem like any visit with a particularly exciting friend. I felt he was my friend, despite my knowledge of his history. He had that way with women. I drew my chair to sit down but hesitated a moment. I nearly offered him a cup of tea, till I remembered in time that he had no physical powers. Oh, but his emotional force was formidable. I must heed Mollie’s warning about letting him inside my head, to make me do things I should not. Already I was mentally scanning what I had written, to see if I had been unconsciously whitewashing Arabella, or maligning Vanejul.

His eyes toured my body from head to toes in that age-old way of a man sizing up a woman. Then a frown puckered his brow. “Why the devil do you wear trousers?” he asked.

“All the women wear them nowadays. They’re comfortable. Don’t you like them?”