Love Charade Part 31

"How dare you!" Danny hurled herself at him as he released her from the vise of his arm. She had endured physical abuse this day for more hours than she could bear to remember and to receive such treatment from the one person who had always viewed her body asa shrine, in whom she had reposed complete trust and confidence, shattered the last straws of her composure.

"Stop!" He seized her wrists. "I'll not have you causing any further damage to yourself or to the child." He pushed her facedown on the tumbled bed, clipping her wrists in the small of her back, and with a low defeated moan Danielle gave in, wondering as she did so whether she would ever be able to forgive her husband for this.

"Laches-moi," she whispered and Justin released her instantly, a panicky shaft of compa.s.sion stabbing him as she turned on her side in a tight fetal curl. Gently he pulled the cover over her and went to sit on the chaise longue until her deep breathing told him that the sedative had taken effect.

Chapter 18 Danielle awoke some eight hours later, her throat dry and head fogged from the drug-induced sleep. But her body was languid with relaxation and she felt again the wondrous quiver in her belly that told her all was well with the babe. Her hands stroked comfortingly over her abdomen as her body whispered its message of loving rea.s.surance to the life it contained. "My lady?"

"What time is it, Molly?" Too lazy to sit up, Danielle turned her head on the pillow, smiling at the maid who now stood by the bed, her face anxious in the shadowy light of the single candle on the mantel.

"About ten o'clock, my lady. Can I bring you anything?"

"Some tea, please. I have a powerful thirst."

"I will bring it directly." Molly left and went speedily downstairs. She had been instructed to inform the earl the minute his wife woke, but with defiant bravery Molly decided to provide the tea first. A dreadful heaviness hung over the house and even the servants' quarters were affected. They all knew now much of what had happened, both Malcolm and Tomas being anxious to recount the story. Malcolm's tale in particular had fired the realm belowstairs with a fierce partisans.h.i.+p for Lady Danny-a partisans.h.i.+p that even Bedford had found himself sharing in spite of the shocking nature of Her Ladys.h.i.+p's actions. But when matters were going so badly abovestairs, those below could only keep the lowest profile imaginable and hope for a resolution between master and mistress.

Only Peter Haversham was unaware of the facts. His position did not allow him to question either the servants or his grim-faced employer. He knew only that something appalling had occurred and obeyed the terse instructions to arrange for the removal of the household to Danesbury for an extended period of time in discreet silence.

Molly brought tea to Danielle's bedside, brushed Her Ladys.h.i.+p's hair, and a.s.sisted her in was.h.i.+ng away the sleep from her eyes before saying tentatively, "My Lord wished to know when you awoke, my lady. May I tell him?"

"Indeed you may, Molly." Danielle smiled rea.s.suringly. "I thank you for your patience. You need have no fear that your delay will have unpleasant consequences."

"No, my lady." Molly smiled a smile of grat.i.tude, comprehension, and friends.h.i.+p.

In her absence, Danielle sipped the tea, the hot fragrant liquid restoring some of her strength. She and Justin were about to have as monumental a fight as they had ever had and it must be the last on the issue of her independence. Their marriage would be made or broken on this rack of conflict and she knew only that it must be made.

Justin, having partaken of a solitary and seemingly tasteless dinner, was sitting in the library staring moodily into the fire when Molly tapped lightly at the door.

"Come in."

Molly s.h.i.+vered slightly at the bleak look on his face. "My Lady is awake, sir."

"Thank you." The girl left and Justin remained staring into the fire for a few minutes longer before getting heavily to his feet. He didn't think he had ever been more miserable as he trod up the stairs, and the main source of his misery was that he was about to make his wife very unhappy. But what possible choice did he have? If she was unable to take care of herself in an appropriate fas.h.i.+on, then he was going to have to a.s.sume that responsibility himself. She was still barely more than a child-just turned nineteen-in spite of her experiences, and she reacted to situations with all the willful impulsiveness of a child who had grown up with few external controls.

The sight of the small battered face on the pillow merely reaffirmed his determination. "How do you feel?"

Taking her chin between long fingers he turned her face to the light, examining the scratch carefully. It looked clean enough, although still raw. "Unb.u.t.ton your gown," he instructed quietly and she did so, revealing the claw marks on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. When he expressed satisfaction with a curt nod, she b.u.t.toned the gown again and lay back against the pillow, waiting.

"You will remain in this room for the next two days," he began. "Apart from the fact that you need to rest, you are not a fit sight for anyone but myself and Molly."

Danielle winced at the cold statement, but she was in no position to argue with the truth so kept silent.

"On Friday we will remove to Danesbury where you will remain until just before your confinement.

Then we shall return to London so that Stuart may attend you when the time comes. Since it is now clear that I cannot trust you to behave with any degree of circ.u.mspection any more than I can trust your word, I shall not let you out of my sight for the next four months."

"Justin, you must listen to me," Danielle said desperately. "I do not wish to go to . . ."

"You have a short memory, ma'am," he interrupted in glacial tones. "I have said once today that your wishes are no longer of the slightest interest to me. All that concerns me is your obedience and I give you fair warning that I shall compel it in whatever manner is necessary. You are reckless, foolhardy, stubborn, and abominably spoiled. I bear considerable blame for the latter, but it is not, I hope, too late to rectify my mistake."

"You cannot talk to me in that manner!" Danielle broke out, anger replacing her earlier despairing hopelessness. "I had no choice but to do what I did. Would you have had me leave the child in that h.e.l.lhole? You saw what they had done to her in the s.p.a.ce of a few hours. G.o.d alone knows what would have happened next. And as to my breaking my word, I did so only in the most precise sense. I did all I could to find you in the time available; I left you a message telling you exactly what I was doing; I was attended by your coachman. There was no secrecy and no deception and I will not stand to hear you accuse me of behaving dishonorably."

Justin looked down at her, the pale cheeks flushed with outrage, the brown eyes huge with indignation.

"There is logic in what you say, but the fact remains that I trusted you not to break a promise and you did. Whatever reasons you may have had for doing so, I do not consider them to be sufficient."

"Have you no compa.s.sion?" she threw at him. "How can you stand there talking self-righteously about promises when a child's life was at stake?"

"And did you once consider the life of our child when you rushed to the rescue?" he gritted, white now with the resurgence of his anger.

"It would have made no difference had I done so." Her voice was low. "It was a question of priorities and necessary risks. I am sorry if we do not agree on priorities and necessary risks but I shall continue to do what I consider right."

Justin wanted to shake her, shake her until those pearly teeth rattled and the defiance left her eyes, never to return. He took a step toward her, seizing her arms. Danielle winced as his fingers bit deep into a deep bruise, but she met his gaze without flinching and with a shuddering breath he released her. "You may thank your stars for your pregnancy, madam. It is the only thing restraining me at the moment." He gave her a mocking bow and left the room, desperate to get away from the maddening creature before he finally lost control.

Danielle did not sleep at all that night. Her bruises throbbed and her limbs ached, but the drugged sleep of the afternoon had done its work too well and she felt no fatigue. The scene with her husband went round and round in her fevered brain and she could pluck no straws of hope from anything that had been said. They were at total impa.s.se and if she refused to yield Justin would force her to do so. If he did that, then there was no possibility of regaining their old footing. Danielle knew with absolute certainty that she could endure no relations.h.i.+p where she must be subservient, must obey the dictates of a master whether she considered them reasonable or not. But she loved her husband with every fiber of her being and knew that he loved her in the same way. So what was to be done?

At dawn she fell into a fitful sleep haunted by faces laughing in derision through blackened stumps; long talops that became the claws of a menacing flock of giant crows reached to tear her as she struggled to run on feet of cement. An enormous figure that she knew was Justin swept her up as she fell beneath her pursuers, but when she clung, sobbing with relief, she saw that he had no face.

The wracking sobs reached Justin next door as he lay staring into the early morning light, his thoughts, had he known it, identical to Danielle's. With a muttered exclamation he hurtled from the room and gazed in horror at the sweat-soaked figure writhing in the twisted sheets, tears coursing down her cheeks from beneath the closed eyes.

"Danny, wake up." He touched her shoulder urgently and her limbs flailed in unconscious panic catching him a glancing blow on the chin. "Danny!"

Her eyes shot open and she stared at him in total lack of recognition that he found more frightening than anything else. Swiftly, he disentangled her from the sheets and scooped her into his arms, sitting on the bed to rock her with soft nonsense words until the shudders ceased.

"You didn't have a face," she moaned. "It wasn't there. It was you but it wasn't-just a horrible white shapeless blank."

"Hush, now," he crooned, placing her hand on his cheek. "I have a face, my love. You can feel it and see it. It was just a nightmare."

She lay quietly in his arms then, as reality rea.s.serted itself and the dream made sense and so lost its terror. "What are we to do, Justin? I understand that you were angry and ... and frightened at what could have happened, and I did react without proper thought, although even if I had thought I would still have taken the same action. But I shall not be able to bear it if you make a prisoner of me and nothing will ever be right between us again."

"But how am I ever to have a moment's peace?" he asked, stroking the damp curls from her brow. "You will follow no course but your own and that is a course I can never predict. For the child's sake, Danny, I must remove you from temptation. There is no need for us to be miserable at Danesbury and surely the prospect of my exclusive company is not too distasteful." He offered a teasing smile but Danielle did not respond.

"You do not understand what I am saying. You are right in saying that I will follow my own course, but that is because I must. I am not your possession, Justin; I belong only to myself. I love you with all my heart but you will not succeed in shaping me to your requirements. You may succeed in imprisoning my body and only I would question your right to do so, but there will be no gain for either of us, only the greatest loss."

Dear G.o.d! Justin looked down at the determined face in helpless frustration. "I am sorry, Danielle, but I must do what I must do," he said with quiet finality. "You must learn where your true priorities lie, and there is no one to teach you but myself. If you resist me, then we shall, indeed, be miserable, but in the interests of the greater good, that is a consequence I am prepared to accept." Quite gently, he put her back on the bed.

"My happiness means nothing to you, then?" Danielle turned her head to the wall.

"On the contrary, it means a great deal to me. But I believe you will be happier when you have learned to behave in a proper way, consonant with your position in society. You are still a child, Danielle, but you are soon to be a mother-the mother of my child. It is time to put your own childish willfulness behind you." He pulled the bell rope by the bed. "You must now get out of that soaked nightgown, take a hot bath, and return to bed with your chocolate. I will visit you later, and if I find you disobedient then, I shall be obliged to a.s.sume the role of jailer."

Justin left the room without another word, brus.h.i.+ng past Molly who had appeared in the doorway in answer to the summons.

"What may I do for you, m'lady?" Molly approached the bed, looking in horror at her mistress's deathly pallor, the dry eyes huge and stricken.

"Nothing," Danielle said. She would not involve Molly in this that would bring the story of her marriage full circle. "I wish only to be left alone to sleep. Do not come again until noon."

Molly looked uncertain, but there was a grim determination in Her Ladys.h.i.+p's expression and voice that the servant knew not how to question. Bobbing a curtsy, she also left.

Danny met the first obstacle to her plan when she tried to fasten the britches that she had not worn for two months. It was quite impossible; so she would not be able to leave Justin's life exactly in the manner in which she had entered it. Shrugging, she dressed in her plainest riding habit, wincing at the renewed throb of her bruised legs as she walked around the chamber, gathering together the few possessions she would take. The de St. Varennes jewels were her own. How she would contrive to sell them, Danielle had as yet no idea, but there was no immediate urgency. She had money enough for a few months, and friends aplenty amongst her compatriots in London who were not known to Justin, and who would take her in willingly.

After the child was born, she would move to some country village where she would have more than enough money to set up as a young widowed recluse . . . What in the devil's name was she doing? Danielle stared at herself in the mirror. After the child was born . . .! She had no right to deprive Linton's child of its birthright. She had no right to deprive Linton of his child. She was no longer a free agent who could run away at will from anything. She had conceived this child with clear thought and she had been about to expose it to ... Sweet heaven, but her husband had been right. She was everything he had said- reckless, foolhardy, stubborn, spoiled. The thicket of her self-made prison sprang up like the th.o.r.n.y hedge enclosing the Sleeping Beauty. Desolately, she sat on the bed cradling her abdomen....

The earl was at his breakfast when he received a visit from the elder Monsieur Roberts. With quiet dignity the visitor refused all offers of refreshment and explained that he had come to inquire after My Lady's health and to express, however inadequately, their grat.i.tude. There were no words, of course, when the sanity of a child had been saved. Brigitte had at last been persuaded to talk of her experiences and it was to be hoped that since that was the case the horror would eventually recede.

Justin had listened to the dignified elder's speech with but half an ear, lost as he was in his own desolation. He was doing the right thing, wasn't he? Danielle did have to accept her changed position, one that she had freely chosen despite the restrictions it would place on her freedom. If she didn't see those necessary restrictions herself, then he had the absolute obligation to open her eyes ... didn't he? He became aware that his visitor had fallen silent. The words "sanity," "horror" still hung in the air.

"What happened to her, monsieur? I would like to know if you can bear to tell me." He heard in horrified silence as the old man described the near rape of his granddaughter, the way her clothes had been ripped from her and she'd been rolled in the ordure-stained hay on the cell floor, filth rubbed into her hair. Justin heard again Danielle's ringing accusation: "Have you no compa.s.sion?" He felt shrunken, a tiny, self-centered atom beside his wife's vast imagination, total empathy and utterly selfless humanity. She had not gone into that cage blind to the danger; she had a pistol in her pocket, had removed all of value on her person and since she had attempted to put up bail she had presumably gone in only as a last resort. He relived the terrifying scene and at last saw all the pieces that his fear-fueled rage had repressed.

Danielle was like no other woman and she never would be. He'd been ranting and raving like a conventional outraged husband and he might just as well have saved his breath to cool his porridge. His choice was quite simple. Either he enforced his will, as was his right, and lost his wife as surely as if he had never met her, or he accepted her on her own terms-for she was her own person and would be true only to herself. He'd always known it, of course. Why else had a man of his years and experience fallen hopelessly in love with a tyrannical, indomitable virago, seventeen years his junior, who turned his life upside down with the merest lift of her little finger? And except when she scared the living daylights out of him, as she had done yesterday, he relished every unpredictable moment.

"Danielle has come to no great harm," he rea.s.sured Monsieur Roberts gently. "But she must keep to her bed for the next day or so. I will give her your news of Brigitte. It will put her mind at rest."

The old man bowed, and Linton escorted his visitor to the door with an impeccable courtesy that told Bedford and his staff very clearly that anyone, however apparently disreputable, who came to the house seeking an interview with either the earl or his countess, should not be turned away unilaterally.

Justin took the stairs two at a time and burst, without ceremony, into his wife's chamber. On the threshold, he stopped dead, his eyes taking in the half-filled portmanteau, the pearls spilling from the opened jewel box, the figure of Danielle, fully dressed, sitting like an effigy on the bed.

She had been intending to leave him, to run from a tyranny, a bondage, that she could never accept. His heart raced and the clammy sweat of fear misted his brow.

"Danielle, you must not. Please, you must not." He crossed to the bed, kneeling to take her cold hands in his. She gave him a blank stare.

"No, I know I must not. I carry your child and, therefore, no longer belong only to myself. You have an obedient possession, sir. I have no need of further lessons."

"You are the most exasperating creature, Danny!" Justin released her hands and stood upright. "I come to you, full of apologies, anxious to make amends, only to find you sitting like some broken reed! Now, get back into bed this instant, because I have a great deal to say to you. I am prepared to accept that I was in the wrong in every area except the physical one. You will stay in bed for the next twenty-four hours, and on that score alone I will brook no argument."

The words, as he had hoped, punctured Danielle's listless resignation. "What is it that you are saying?"

"At this point, only that if you are not back between the sheets by the time I have set this room to rights, I shall summon up the energy to give you the trouble you have been asking for with such patience since first we met."

The blood that seemed to have coagulated in her veins began again to flow, wanned by the teasing note in his voice, the note that declared a return to normal. He was bullying her in the old way, the private loving way that conjured up the past and was not to be taken seriously.

Danielle threw off her clothes and slid into the tumbled bed, watching as Justin removed from other eyes all traces of her impending flight.

He turned to her and smiled, coming to sit on the bed beside her. "I have been very foolish," Justin said, taking her hands again. "The only excuse I can offer is that I was frightened out of my wits and they have only just returned to me."

"I also . . ." she began, but he laid a finger over her lips.

"No, you have not been foolish. You did what was right, and when you were about to do what was not right ... to run from this . . . you found yourself unable to do so." He raised her hand to his lips, kissing her palm, before continuing with quiet resolution.

"My love, for the duration of your pregnancy will you agree to provide a.s.sistance only from this house? There must be others who can do some of what you do, not as well, I'm convinced, but they can be adequate replacements temporarily. There is no reason why you should not receive your people here, listen to the problems, and decide what is to be done. I accept that there will be emergencies and will ensure that you always know where I am to be found."

When she said nothing, only played intently with his fingers, he went on. "You must understand that this is simply a ' request-something that I am asking you to do for me. If you cannot agree to it, then I will manage as best I may. But I would like to feel that I and our child are as important to you as the rest of the world. We may not suffer so dramatically but you are all and everything to me, my love, and are certainly so to that babe and will be for many years to come."

A tear splashed hot on his hand. "Tiens! Now look what you have done." Danny sniffed vigorously. "You are so clever to turn the tables in that way. Now I feel miserably guilty instead of cross and determined to make you see things from my point of view."

"You have already done so, Danny. It is because you have that we are talking in this way. But you have not yet said whether you will accede to my request."

"You have left me no choice, milord, as well you know. I will resist your commands, but I am quite incapable of resisting such an appeal to my love for you and to my common sense. It will always be so. You may, on occasion, have to remind me of these things when I become involved in other matters, but you will have no need to play the bully again." She looked at him directly, without accusation or rancor but with firm a.s.sertion.

Justin sighed. "You needed the laudanum, Danielle, and I was too angry to reason with you. I cannot promise not to do the same again in similar circ.u.mstances."

Danny chuckled suddenly, and the sound brought Justin the most blessed relief. "This is a splendid conversation. We are dancing around each other, giving a little here and a little there. It is a true game of compromise, I think, but we understand each other now?"

"I understand that I am wedded to a lifetime of headaches and anxiety and that the woman in my bed will be the mother of my children only when she choosesand belongs only to herself and accepts no jurisdiction but her own. I am mad to accept it and even more so for liking it. I just beg that you will keep my hag-ridden existence a secret from Society."

"You are not hag-ridden!"

"Am I not?" His eyebrows shot up. "And by a nineteen-year-old-chit to add insult to injury."

Danny squirmed from beneath the sheets with an agile twist and flung herself against him, bearing him down onto the bed in helpless laughter. As they tumbled together, Justin, mindful of her bruises and delicate condition, found himself at a considerable disadvantage.

"Vagabond!" He managed to catch her hands eventually and yanked her arms above her head, scissoring her legs between his own. "Yield, you impossible wretch."

"I yield." Her body became soft beneath him; the brown eyes glowed an invitation.

It was an invitation Justin ached to accept, and he shook his head with the greatest reluctance. "My love, you are not in a fit condition."

Danielle pulled a face, comical in its disgusted resignation. "No, I suppose I am not. You will not, however, expect me to restrain myself for more than one more day." Suddenly serious, she took his hand and pressed it to her belly. "Perhaps you cannot feel it yet, but our child is awake, my love. I think he is going to be in much mischief when he feels his feet."

"That would not surprise me in the least," Justin murmured, "since you will be guiding his steps."

She smiled and lay back on the bed. "It is a son, Justin."

"How can you know that?" Lying beside her he began to stroke her body in a long languid caress, carefully circ.u.mventing the bruises on her legs and arms.