Part 39 (1/2)
Roxane continued to appear at those social affairs she couldn't politely refuse, and the night before the Trondheim was due to sail, she attended a dinner party at Countess of Sutherland's. A friend of long standing, the Countess was hosting an engagement party for her eldest daughter. Roxane intended to stay only for the small dinner party preceding the ball, having begged off from the larger entertainment open to an extended guest list.
She was in fact waiting in the entrance hall for her carriage to be brought up when Harold G.o.dfrey arrived with the Duke of Queensberry.
There was no avoiding them, and she dared not anyway, should her behavior arouse suspicion. While the initial widespread pursuit after Johnnie's escape had abated, a search was still in progress. So her smile was gracious as they approached her.
”You're just arriving too?” Queensberry said, bowing over her hand.
”Actually, I'm leaving,” Roxane replied. ”My children are ill, but I'd promised Jean I'd come for dinner.”
”A shame,” the Duke politely said, his attention suddenly caught by one of his aides waving him over to a group of guests at the foot of the staircase. ”We'll miss your lovely company. Excuse me, Countess,” he added, ”Fenton seems agitated.” And sketching a bow, he moved away.
Harold G.o.dfrey didn't follow him but stood large, solid, and glaring directly in front of her. ”You've managed to avoid me, Countess, for many days.” The heat in his voice matched the blaze-red damask of his lace-trimmed coat.
”I'm not avoiding you, G.o.dfrey. With my children sick, I'm not receiving visitors.” She caught her orchid velvet cloak closer in unconscious protection.
”You're out occasionally,” he gruffly declared. ”You could come to my apartments.”
”I'm sorry.” She tried to project a courteous blandness to such coa.r.s.e bluntness. ”But my time is very limited at the moment. I attend only those functions that are absolutely necessary. With five children, my Lord, all in various stages of smallpox,11 my social engagements are much curtailed. Perhaps later.”
”Perhaps, madam, you could find the time now.” He grasped her upper arm through the velvet of her cape, his grip painful.
”Really, G.o.dfrey, I dislike aggression.” Her violet gaze held his steadily. ”Kindly unhand me, or I'll call for a.s.sistance.”
He held her arm for a moment more to indicate his capabilities. ”I don't intend to wait much longer, madam.” His tone was silky with malice as he released her.
”You'll wait, G.o.dfrey,” Roxane softly replied, unable to disguise her rising temper, ”upon my convenience.”
”We'll see.” His grey eyes, framed by his powdered, full-bottomed wig, were utterly cold.
”Indeed we will,” she replied, her posture regal, her eyes meeting his boldly. And with the barest inclination of her head, she swept toward the doors, not caring whether her carriage was ready or not, raging at his brutish rudeness. d.a.m.ned Englis.h.!.+ And d.a.m.ned Queensberry, too, for all his smooth courtesy. She was sick to death of men with no principles.
The following evening Roxane was writing a note to her children when Johnnie walked into the drawing room. She was surprised to see him on the main floor. Regardless of his miraculous recovery, he was still weak.
She smiled across her small writing desk. ”You managed three flights of stairs.”
”As you see.” He held his arms out briefly. He'd not regained all his weight yet, and he was leaner than he'd been in the past, but his smile was the same.
”You're ready to leave?” He wore an embroidered russet leather coat for travel, and his sword gleamed at his side.
”As soon as everyone returns from last-minute errands. They waited till dusk to go out.” Strolling across the candlelit room, he dropped onto a high-backed sofa opposite her. ”I wanted to come down and thank you again before I left.”
”You're very welcome.” Her smiled flashed. ”It was a pleasure to thwart Queensberry and G.o.dfrey.”
”You don't wish to join us in Holland, Robbie tells me.”
She set aside the pen she was holding and folded her hands on the inlaid desktop before she answered. ”I can't consider it, with the children-although I shouldn't consider it at all if I were sensible. He's much too young.” She gazed across the small distance to where Johnnie rested, her mouth in a thoughtful moue. ”I'm allowing myself to be very foolish about him.”
”I probably would have agreed with you a year ago, when I didn't understand there were pleasures beyond those of a casual nature. But if you care about him, it's not foolish. Good G.o.d, Roxie, certainly you and I can distinguish the difference between love and amour. We've spent enough years practicing one and avoiding the other.”
”It's different for a man in our world. A young woman's a delectable prize, as available to him as any bijoux he cares to possess.”
Johnnie grinned. ”Do you wish to possess my young brother?”
She smiled back. ”Honestly, yes. Wouldn't that be simple? I could just add him to my collection of fine things and bring him out to admire when it suited me.”
”If you didn't love him,” Johnnie quietly volunteered.
”Yes-and therein lies the complexity. He wouldn't be docile, would he, like a young mistress?”
Johnnie laughed. ”Knowing my brother, you'd he hard-pressed to find that word serviceable.”
”It's a d.a.m.ned dilemma.” Leaning back in her chair, she sighed.
”It doesn't have to be ... if it's only society that causes you misgivings.”
”I wouldn't have considered myself so timid or vain. I'm surprised at myself.”
”You're a beautiful woman familiar with adulation,” Johnnie softly said, taking in the splendor of her pale skin, rich copper hair, her extravagant womanly body adorned in opulent green Genoa velvet. ”Fear of mockery has to be a novel sensation for you. But consider, darling, once we've wrested our estates back from Queensberry, you'll have Robbie and myself to discourage any disparaging remarks.”
”The children will surely be exposed to the ridicule as well,” she added with a small frown.
”Are you talking about the same children I know? The ones who've tested the patience, endurance, and valor of a dozen tutors and governesses and dancing masters over the past decade? They've never struck me as overly sensitive.”
”Are you saying my children are h.e.l.lions?” Her smile was companionable.
”In the nicest possible way-” He grinned. ”Yes. But then that's why the children and I always got along so well.”
There was a small silence in which she leaned forward and unnecessarily straightened the writing accessories on the desktop. Her voice when she finally spoke held a guarded apprehension. ”Robbie's actually talking of marriage.”
”I know.” He understood the apprehension, this man who had so recently discovered the unfamiliar universe of love.
”I tried to dissuade him, but he won't have it.”
”He's in love with you. He doesn't have a choice. Why not marry him?”
”So you're an advocate now that you find the state so blissful.”
”A wholehearted advocate-if you love him. There's nothing better in the world.”
”An authority speaks.”
”One to another. Confess, darling, all these years after Jamie's death, aren't you truly happy again?”
She looked at him for a lengthy moment, her eyes pools of violet shade in the candlelight, then nodded her head. ”I feel guilty because I don't feel more guilty about forsaking Jamie's memory. But I'm wildly in love again like I was at sixteen.”
”At least you recognize the feeling.”
”And you never did, until you met Elizabeth.”
”I didn't recognize it even then, until she was about to marry someone else.”