She supposed he’d applied the same diligence and persistence to the art of kissing that he’d employed to improve his drawing. The same way he’d trained himself to strike fire in an instant with a tinderbox.
And when he bedded a woman . . . but this was not the time to speculate.
She pushed the door open and walked into the hall.
Lisle followed a moment after.
There were all the servants, exactly as they’d been before, waiting in what once had been the screens passage.
They didn’t look depressed anymore.
They all wore the same look of keen interest.
She drew herself up, once again the chatelaine of the castle.
“Back to work,” she told the kitchen servants.
They filed past her through the door into the kitchen area.
She gave a few final instructions to the others, and they quickly scattered to attend to their duties.
The great hall emptied, but for a pair of servants at the opposite end, near the fireplace, who were carrying furnishings into the Harpies’ quarters. The door was open and she could hear the ladies arguing about who ought to get the first-floor bedroom and who ought to get the one above it.
She’d let them sort that out for themselves.
When she turned back to Lisle, he was saying something to Nichols. The valet nodded and glided away.
“They heard,” Lisle said in a low voice.
“I supposed that was why they looked so attentive,” she said.
“Not us,” he said. “They heard your encounter with Aillier.” He nodded at the kitchen door. “The door’s cracked. That, added to chinks in the mortar and broken windows, means sound travels more easily than it will once we’ve completed repairs. They heard him roaring at you. They heard something of what you said in answer. They heard his reaction. Then, in a very short time, they heard things return to normal. You saw how the kitchen servants didn’t hesitate to return. And the rest of the staff is properly impressed.”
She smiled. “I slew the dragon.”
“You were brilliant,” he said. He paused. “I should have realized. I’m sorry I doubted you. Mind, I’m still not happy to be here—but you’ve made it a degree less dismal.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I find you diverting, too.”
His eyebrows went up. “Diverting.”
“All the same, what happened in the kitchen passage must not happen again,” she said. “You know I’m lacking in moral fiber. And I know you have a great deal—all sort of principles and ethics and such.” She gave a dismissive wave.
“Yes. And such.” The haunted look came into his eyes. Guilt was eating at him. Drat her stepfather, for fitting him up with a conscience and strict notions of Duty and Honor.
She leaned in closer. “Lisle, it’s perfectly natural. We’re young, we’re beautiful—”
“And modest, too.”
“You like facts,” she said. “Let’s face them. Fact: Intellect has an uphill battle against animal urges. Fact: We’re badly chaperoned. Conclusion: The situation is ripe for disaster. I shall do my best not to err in that way again, but—”
“Wonderful,” he said. “Then it’s all up to me to protect your honor. Such a fine job I’ve done so far.”
She grabbed his lapels. “Listen to me, you high-principled thickhead. We cannot make that mistake again. Do you know how close we came to the Irrevocable?” She let go of him, to hold her right hand up, thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart. “This close we came . . .” She paused for dramatic effect. “. . . to playing into your parents’ hands.”
His head went back as though she’d slapped him.
Someone had to do it. Someone had to do something. She hadn’t planned for this. She’d thought she could manage him the way she managed other men. But she couldn’t, and she saw that they were racing down a slippery slope. If he left it to her, she’d wave her hands and shout, “Yes, faster, faster!”
His voice broke the taut silence.
“What did you say?”
She had his full, concentrated attention now. “They’re trying to keep you home by hanging this millstone of a castle about your neck,” she said. “They hope that the longer you’re home, the less you’ll think of Egypt, and by and by you’ll forget about it and take a fancy to a proper English girl and marry and settle down.”
He stared at her. “I don’t . . .” She saw the realization dawn in his grey eyes.
“Yes,” she said, “they don’t even care if it’s me.”
It took Lisle a moment to absorb it. Then he saw it in his mind’s eye: his parents’ smiling faces, the conspiratorial looks cast up and down the table, the dowager’s smiles and indulgent looks. Like a play.
“Olivia,” he said mildly, his heart thudding, “what did you tell them?”
“Tell them? Don’t be absurd. I should never be so careless as to actually say it. I merely encouraged them to think it.”
“That you’d . . .” He could hardly bear to say it. “That you’d set your cap for me?”
“It’s the sort of sentimental nonsense they’d believe,” she said. “And the one excuse they’d accept for my traveling with you, and staying here with you.”
“To trap me,” he said. “Into marriage.”
“Yes.” She beamed at him. “I know you’re shocked.”
“There’s an understatement.”
“After all, we both know they’ve never really liked me. But as I told you, rank and money will buy almost anything, and I’m very well connected as well as disgustingly rich.”
He put his hand to his head and leaned against the table. Really, she was beyond anything. To stand there, so cheerfully explaining this monstrous lie she’d told . . . implied. “You take my breath away.”
She moved to lean against the table next to him, as casually as though they hadn’t done what they’d done a moment ago. In the kitchen passage, of all places!
“The only thing I hadn’t bargained for was that we should have this inconvenient attraction,” she said.
“Inconvenient.”
“As infuriating and thickheaded as you are, you’re my dearest friend in the world,” she said. “I don’t want to ruin your life, and I know you don’t want to ruin mine. We have so many fine examples about us of good marriages. My mother found her own true love twice. I should be happy to find mine once. And that’s what I wish for you. But you know we should never suit in that way.”
“Gad, no.”
She scowled at him. “You needn’t agree so enthusiastically.”
“It’s a fact,” he said. He knew it was. She was a wonder of nature, but the simoom was a wonder of nature, too. So were hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. He’d grown up in chaos. Rathbourne had given him order. Lisle needed order. He’d spent the last ten years making an orderly if occasionally exciting life. He’d been fortunate to discover early what he wanted, and he’d pursued that goal patiently and determinedly.
With her, everything flew out of control. Worst of all he lost control. Look what he’d done. Again and again and again.
“Well, then,” she said.
“Right.” He straightened away from the table. “I’m going up to the roof now.”
“The roof! I admit that my plans have gone a bit awry, but there’s no reason we can’t master this.” She came away from the table. “Matters got out of hand, but it’s not the end of the world. There’s no need to do anything so extreme as throw yourself from the roof.”
For a moment he could only gaze at her in wonder.
Then, “I’m not going to throw myself from the roof,” he said patiently. “I’m going up to complete my survey of the house. Because of the downpour, I wasn’t able to measure the roof area or assess its condition or
draw the layout.”
“Oh,” she said. She stepped back two paces. “That’s all right, then.”
“Throw myself from the roof,” he muttered. “Really.”
“You look so upset.”
“That’s because I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or hit my head against the wall,” he said. “What I need is calm. I need, desperately, to do something very, very boring.”
Later that evening
Though it wasn’t his most elaborate dinner, Aillier contrived to put a very good one on the table.
It was the first proper dinner Lisle had eaten since he left London, he realized. A proper, civilized dinner, at a proper dining table, with diners conversing in a relatively intelligent manner. It was, too, the first dinner he’d presided over in one of his family’s homes.
By the time he and the ladies of the household left the table and gathered at the fire, the day’s tumult had subsided somewhat. Not altogether. His loss of control with Olivia still haunted him. And he still couldn’t see how this Idea of hers would get him to Egypt by the spring. Still, he was calmer, thanks to the work he’d had the good sense to undertake.
His usual remedy for confusion or upset of any kind was to work. Measuring and evaluating and making notes, he was on familiar, peaceful ground—even here, in this primitive structure in this miserable climate.
While he concentrated on the familiar task, confusion and frustration abated.
And during that time, he now discovered, the Olivia whirlwind had changed the landscape. She, the embodiment of disorder, had created calm.
The servants had settled into a proper routine, and in a matter of hours, the castle had begun to look like an abode instead of a desolate fortress.
Looking about him, Lisle saw peace and order. He’d forgotten what that was like. The meal had had a mellowing effect, and the wine, naturally, made everything pleasanter. Even the Harpies were more amusing and less exasperating.
At present they were drunk, but that was normal. For the moment, they were quiet, because Olivia was reading from one of Cousin Frederick Dalmay’s histories of Gorewood Castle.
The histories included the requisite ghost stories. There was the usual body inside the wall—this one a traitor who’d been tortured in the dungeon. He haunted the basement. There was the usual murdered pregnant serving maid. She appeared in the kitchen passage after weddings and births. There was a lady who appeared in the minstrels’ gallery when she felt like it, and a knight who on certain feast days haunted the second-floor chapel.
Now Olivia had come to the ghosts who loitered about the roof.
“ ‘Seven men accused of plotting the heinous murder were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered,’ ” she read. “ ‘Loudly protesting their innocence, they demanded a chance to prove it through trial. To everyone’s surprise, Lord Dalmay agreed. He had the villains taken up to the top of the south tower, and invited them to prove their innocence by jumping across the gap to the north tower. Any who succeeded would be proclaimed innocent. Some of Dalmay’s followers protested. His lordship was overly merciful, they said. No one could make the leap. They’d plummet to the ground and die instantly. For what they’d done, these men deserved a slow, agonizing death. But in Lord Dalmay’s realm, his word was law. Thus, one by one, the men stood upon the battlement. One by one, they sprang toward freedom. And one by one, six men fell to their death.’ ”
“Six?” Lisle said.
“ ‘One man did not die,’ ” Olivia read, “ ‘and Lord Dalmay abided by his judgment. The man was declared innocent and allowed to go free.’ ”
Lisle laughed. “The fellow survived a fall of one hundred six feet?”
“No, he made the leap,” Olivia said.
“Must have had prodigious long legs,” said Lady Withcote.
“You know what they say about long-legged men,” said Lady Cooper.
“That’s not legs, Agatha,” said Lady Withcote. “It’s the feet. Big feet, they say, big—”
“It’s physically impossible,” Lisle said. “The man would have to sprout wings.”
“What’s the distance between the two towers?” Olivia said. “Are you sure an agile man couldn’t make the leap?”
“There’s nothing like an agile man,” Lady Cooper said reminiscently.
“Remember Lord Ardberry?”
“How could I forget?”
Lisle met Olivia’s gaze. She was biting back laughter, as he was.
“Made a study of it,” said Lady Withcote. “From the time he was in India. Some sort of secret book, he said.”
“I thought it was a sacred book.”
“Maybe it was both. In any case, that’s why he learned Sanskrit.”
“Not that one needed to read anything in any language. You saw his collection of pictures.”
“Worth a thousand words, every one of them.”
“Quite as entertaining as Eugenia’s engravings.”
Lisle saw it in his mind’s eye, as clear as if he had the writing paper in front of him: Engrav One of Olivia’s provocative, crossed-out words.
“What engravings?” he said.
“Did you never see them?” said Lady Cooper. “I thought all the Carsington boys discovered them at one time or another. Highly educational.”
“I’m not, technically, a Car—”
“Really, Agatha,” said Lady Withcote. “As though Lord Lisle needs to be educated. The young man is nearly four and twenty, and he lives where girls dance naked in the street and men keep harems. For all we know he’s got a harem, and has tried all four hundred positions.”
“Millicent, you know perfectly well there are not four hundred. Even Lord Ardberry admitted that numbers two hundred sixty-three and three hundred eighty-four were physically impossible for anybody with a spine.”
Lisle looked at Olivia. “What engravings?” he said.
“Great-Grandmama’s,” she said in a bored voice. She put her book down, and rose from the chair.
“I’m going up to the roof,” she said. “I need fresh air. And I want to see how wide the gap is.” She collected her shawl and sauntered from the room.
It was most unfair.
She’d studied Great-Grandmama’s pictures. They were highly educational. She’d looked forward to experiencing those activities. But she’d kissed some men and allowed a few minor liberties and it had been disappointing. A little titillating—but that was mainly because of knowing she was misbehaving.
Then Lisle had come back, a fully grown man who’d probably learned kissing from oriental experts. He would go to an expert. And practice. Diligently.
Now she understood why the ladies talked so much about it and why Great-Grandmama had loved her one and only husband so much and why she’d been such a merry widow.
Not titillation.
Passion.
It didn’t require love, Great-Grandmama said. But love made a delicious sauce.
That was all very well, but passion had a nasty way of making one restless and vexed for no reason. Since Olivia had been so unlucky as to experience it for the first time with Lisle, she had to cope with balked passion, and that was most unpleasant.
She climbed up and up, wondering where all the cold air had vanished to. The wind wailed in the stairwell but it was about as cooling to her emotions as a hot desert wind.
She climbed round and round, up and up: past the second floor, then past the third floor, once the garrison’s quarters and now the servants’. Farther up she went, one last flight, then through the little door, and onto the roof at last.
She walked out to the wall, set her hands on it, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. The air was cool, beautifully cool, and it was quiet here, far away from all the talking.
She took another deep breath,
let it out, and opened her eyes.
Stars and stars and stars.
All around her, above her.
She’d never seen so many. And there was the moon, high and bright, approaching the full. It was so beautiful, this wondrous place.
“What engravings?” came a low voice behind her.
She did not turn around. “Oh, you know,” she said carelessly. “The naughty pictures they sell from under the counter at the print shops. Along with the ones Great-Grandmama collected when she traveled abroad. Everything from Aretino to the latest illustrations for Fanny Hill. She and the Harpies still cackle over them.”
“I guessed it was something of the sort,” Lisle said. His evening shoes made almost no sound on the stone floor, but she could feel him approaching.
He came to a stop beside her, nearly a foot away, and set his hands on the wall. “But you never told me. You raised the subject in a letter, then crossed it out, in that provoking way you have.”
“I can’t believe you remember that.” She stole a glance at him, and that was a mistake. Moonlight and starlight streaked his hair with silver and made polished marble of his profile.
“Of course I remember,” he said. “It was particularly aggravating at the time. I was—what?—fourteen or fifteen? Naturally, I was dying to see them, and furious with you for teasing me. ‘Ha, ha, Lisle,’ he said in singsong. ‘I have dirty pictures. You don’t.’ ”
“You didn’t need dirty pictures. You had dancing girls.”
He turned fully toward her and leaned his elbow on the parapet. He studied her face for the longest time.
She let him study her. She was a card player, a good one. No one could read her face.
“The dancing girls trouble you strangely,” he said.
“Of course they do,” she said. “Look at me.” She made a sweeping gesture, over the swell of skirts and ballooning sleeves.
“I’m looking,” he said.
“Me, in all this. Corseted and petticoated and hemmed in on every side.”
“That seems to be the fashion,” he said.
“They dance in the streets,” she said.