Shadows of the Night Page 4

  But she didn’t want a softer heart. She wanted to be whole again, to be herself again, with Colin safely on the other side of her skin.

  She heard the parlor door open, and the light in the parlor dimmed. Quickly, she wriggled under the covers, pulling them up to her chin, counterpane and all, despite the muggy night. Staring at the vague folds of the window curtains with her back to the doorway, she heard Colin stumble in through the darkness.

  He hesitated for a moment, and she could feel his gaze sweeping across the room, trying to make out the shapes of the furniture in the darkness. Footsteps again. They reached the opposite side of the bed, but instead of stopping, they followed the bed’s perimeter around. Fern could feel his hand dragging against the counterpane through the mattress as he used it to guide him.

  She closed her eyes as he rounded the corner at the foot of the bed, half fearing and half hoping that he would come up to her and … what?

  But whatever incipient expectations she harbored were disappointed, for he came no closer. He took two steps away from the bed, and then the curtains swished back and the sash grated up, first on one window, then on the other. A damp, salt-laden breeze, marginally cooler than the close air of the room, drifted through to touch Fern’s cheek.

  The footsteps retreated as Colin circled back around the bed. For an instant, there was nothing, then a weight settled on the mattress, enough greater than hers that Fern’s body began to tilt toward him before she realized what was happening and shifted to settle more firmly in her crease in the bed.

  She felt a brush on the back of her neck, Colin’s fingers catching slightly in the disarray of her coiffure. But she did not move, and the hand retreated. Soon his breathing eased into the slow rhythm of sleep, occasionally punctuated by slightly drunken snores.

  But it was a very long time before Fern found any rest.

  *

  Fern woke to a yellow dawn and the shrill cry of a gull. She lay still for a moment, looking through the twin rectangles of the windows at the slate-tiled roofs across the street, the long blue sky stretching above them. The emptiness of it echoed something new within her, something so raw and wide that she could not encompass it.

  Already, the day was warm, and sweat dampened her body beneath the sheets. The blankets and counterpane were bunched at the foot of the bed; she must have pushed them off in her sleep.

  She slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb her husband, who lay sprawled on top of the sheets in warm, buttery light like some slumbering, capricious Greek god. His perfectly molded muscles were softened in unconsciousness, his lean flanks bare, his side-turned face hidden in the crook of his elbow. She regarded him for a moment with a mixture of feelings that she could put no simple name to. Fear was part of it, and uncertainty, and some instinctive thrill that she alone could see the embodiment of masculine power lying unaware … and almost defenseless. And, to her shame, desire was part of it, too.

  Fern turned away from him to look down upon the street, the slight, salt-tainted breeze cooling her skin. A few stray pedestrians passed in the thin light below, servants and laborers already at work even at this early hour. She ought to draw the curtains: If one of them looked up, there was a chance he might see her through the open window.

  But she began to understand, now, that emptiness that she felt upon awakening; whatever part of her had held the modesty of innocence was no longer there. That piece of her had been hers alone, but now it was gone, stolen past all recovery, so what did it matter who saw what remained? She wanted, in some bizarre way, for the world to know what had happened to her. She wanted to shout it aloud, and whether the impulse was anger, betrayal, or something both more obscure and more wild within her, she did not know.

  But she was used to ignoring that unconventional corner of her mind. So instead, she crossed the room softly, the jointure of her legs aching slightly with every step. The pain was like a brand left in her flesh, a tangible echo of what Colin had taken: It is mine. I have claimed you.

  No, I am mine, she thought, with fierceness and hopelessness. Why had no one told her this was what marriage was? There was, of course, a great deal of talk about two people becoming one flesh, but no one had ever explained what that meant. No one had ever told her that the flesh they would become was the husband’s, the wife’s annihilated in the heat of that thrusting ego.

  Fern stopped in front of the dresser and lifted the transferware water pitcher that waited beside a small stack of crisp white cloths. The blue and white Chinese ladies in the basin seemed to look at her reproachfully as the water swirled up to drown them. Fern leaned over the basin and splashed her face, fragmenting their images in a cascade of drops and ripples. She tasted salt as the water flowed across her lips, and she felt lightened when it had gone. When she washed between her legs, the linen came away spotted with the rusty brown of dried blood.

  There was a stirring from the bed, and Fern raised her eyes to meet Colin’s gaze in the mirror. He was on his back, his head propped up on the pillows and his long, lean body stretched out across the bed. His private parts lay exposed, and Fern could not help but look, remembering the night before. His member was nothing like the huge, hard, heavy thing she had felt then, but it still bore little resemblance to the paintings in the British Museum or the statues in the less bowdlerized Italian villas. It was darker than the skin around it, almost purple, and it lay, bloated and strangely limp, pillowed on a nest of hair and lying slightly over his thigh.

  A sense of shame at their nakedness stole over her, but there was something hot and proud and brittle in the feeling, too, like a beggared queen brought before her conqueror. The look he gave her was thorough, possessive, and abruptly, she wanted no part of it. She wadded up the damp linen cloth so the stain was hidden and dropped it on the dresser.

  Her untouched dressing gown had been laid out on the bench at the foot of the bed, and now she picked it up and slid her arms into its ruffled sleeves, a shield of lace and linen.

  Colin lifted an eyebrow. “The view was pleasant.”

  “If you wish me to remove my clothing, you need only order me to do so. I did promise to obey.” Those words came unbidden, and Fern was almost startled to hear herself say them.

  Colin’s eyes narrowed, and her breath caught a little at the coldness in them. No man should be so formidable with sleep-ruffled hair. “I would hope that I needn’t ever order you to do anything.”

  Fern regretted her words instantly. “Of course not. I was only teasing.”

  But she felt the empty space curl up into a hot, hard kernel in a distant corner of her mind, and her fingers seemed to act of their own accord, for they finished buttoning up her dressing gown before she turned away again to see to her toilette.

  Colin grimaced as Fern turned her back to him. He had lain awake for some time, staying in bed in the vain hope that his nausea and headache would disappear before his new wife woke. Despite the too-bright light that streamed in through the windows and made his eyeballs ache, Fern’s soft face was a pleasing enough vision, if only her brow didn’t knit in such an unbecoming way when she looked at him. He would have liked it even better were the room decently dim.

  He swung his legs out of bed and stood up—and immediately regretted it. Rubbing his aching forehead, he circled around the bed and shut the windows with two quick swishes of the velvet curtains.

  Much better.

  It had probably been a bad idea to get drunk on his wedding night, he admitted to himself. But he hadn’t been so drunk that the memory of it had been obscured, and from everything that he recalled, it had still been a satisfying encounter. His lust had been sated, and Fern had been willing and enjoyable enough. Perhaps she hadn’t indulged in the acrobatics that some women of his acquaintance prided themselves in, but that was no flaw; he was glad enough to have an innocent as a wife, and he’d always found such elaborations unnecessary and undesirable in his quest for a satisfying release.

  He turned too quickly, s
ending another bolt of pain through his head. “You look lovely, mon ange, but you are the only lovely thing about this blasted morning,” he said, hiding his wince.

  She laughed, her face relaxing, and he realized that it had been tense.

  Yet more honeymoon jitters, he thought with a very private mental snort. Must he spend the next month coaxing her out of herself every night? He couldn’t see what she could possibly still be nervous about. With everything taken into account, their wedding night had gone well enough. Almost perfectly satisfactorily, if she hadn’t gone so rigid there toward the end. He turned away from her and shrugged on his dressing gown.

  “I had planned for us to see the Pavilion today.” He tied the sash of the dressing gown around his waist in two efficient movements. “Somehow, though, I am less enthusiastic than I was.” He glanced at the window, where sunlight painfully gilded the edges of the curtains where they did not meet properly.

  She smiled again, and this time, he could see the strain in it. “Visiting the Pavilion sounds delightful.”

  A properly agreeable response. Why, then, did it rankle him? “As soon as we finish breakfast,” he promised. Her glazed expression did not alter. He crossed to the bedside again and tugged the bellpull.

  “I will meet you downstairs in half an hour,” he said, opening the wardrobe to pull out a morning suit and searching in the drawers until he had socks, underclothing, and a starched white shirt to match. He shoved his feet into his shoes without bending down. “Williams will attend me in the parlor so that you may dress in privacy with that maid, whatever her name is.”

  “Lucy.” Her expression changed, but the shift was inscrutable, so he could not fathom what it meant. Then she thanked him with enough sincerity that he dismissed his lingering doubts as he left the room.

  “You’re quite welcome, mon ange,” he replied automatically, but he shut the door behind him with a feeling of uncertainty. He wasn’t sure anymore what this marriage was going to be, and it was the first time in his memory that he had been uncertain about anything that mattered.

  He decided that he disliked the feeling, and he only hoped that he would not dislike his wife, too.

  Chapter Four

  Fern stared blankly at the door that Colin had just closed, feeling as if the world were falling away under her feet.

  To him nothing had changed. He had no idea what he had done to her, what she had felt. He had done it to her and she didn’t even know.

  The door opened again, and Fern stiffened. But it was her temporary lady’s maid who entered.

  “Morning, m’m,” she said, bobbing and giving Fern a boldly curious glance through her lashes despite her down-tilted head.

  “Good morning,” Fern said with as much dignity as she could muster. She turned away and jerked open the window curtains, letting the light and the sea breeze back into the suddenly stifling room. She turned back to meet the maid’s scandalized expression.

  “But, m’m, someone might see in!”

  “Then I will stand away from the windows,” Fern said firmly.

  The woman opened her mouth as if she wanted to argue, then shut it again. “Yes, m’m.”

  Fern unbuttoned her dressing gown and stood like a mannequin while the maid dressed her, pretending she did not see the knowing glances the girl cast at the scattered clothing from the night before and the disarray of the bed.

  More knowing than I, she thought with abrupt resentment. But she said nothing, did nothing, just allowed herself to be clothed in her blue taffeta walking dress and then sat obediently at the vanity to permit the maid to repair the ravages of her hair.

  As the girl worked, Fern looked at her reflection for the first time in a very long while. She had sat like this for a lady’s maid a thousand times since she had come out, and at least half a dozen times a day, she stopped at a mirror to straighten her hat or smooth her hair. But that wasn’t the same as truly looking, as she did now.

  Through fresh eyes she saw a young woman, plumply pretty, with a soft face, soft, wisping hair, and gentle gray eyes. She looked conventional. Predictable. Safe. Looking into those eyes, Fern would never have guessed the thoughts she knew lurked beneath.

  But that didn’t make them any less legitimate. Nor, she felt with a growing conviction that filled her with a trepid kind of euphoria, could they be dismissed for long.

  “How far is it to the Pavilion?” she asked Lucy.

  “Couldn’t say, m’m. Not too far,” the woman answered promptly.

  “I think I shall ask to walk,” she decided. She had a morbid aversion to being trapped in a carriage with Colin, though she was aware of the vast difference between asking for a thing and getting it and had no reason to believe that he would accommodate her. In fact, she was more than half certain that he would refuse, and she took a perverse kind of satisfaction in forcing Colin to actively deny her in his neat ordering of her life, to make him oppose her rather than to simply acquiesce quietly to his every whim. At some level, such an action only emphasized her powerlessness, but it also required that he take the role of a managing bully instead of a magnanimous benefactor, and that differentiation was obscurely critical to her now. She could only hope that it would make some difference.

  The maid finished and left, and as Fern was about to follow her out the door, she saw Colin’s waistcoat from the afternoon before, now draped over a chair. She remembered the letter that he had read on the train, and she hesitated. She had no right to look at it—in fact, Colin had specifically instructed her to stay away from all business matters. But that hurt, angry corner of her mind stirred, and she set her chin and stepped toward the waistcoat, her heart beating hard in her ears. With jerky movements, she rifled through the outer pocket—and came up with two letters, not one.

  Ignoring the stab of guilt, she pulled them out and opened the top one. Familiar writing greeted her.

  June 8

  Lincoln’s Inn

  Dear Mr. Radcliffe—

  I have continued to make with the utmost diligence the inquiries that you requested in respect to Wrexmere & c. However, my ability to discover anything is still hampered by the unfortunate circumstances of the ledger-books, and the difficulty of achieving any sort of meaningful communication from Joseph Reston.

  At this point, I would strongly recommend an application to your father, in order to better assess the circumstances of his history with the place before taking any direct action of your own.

  I remain, Yr. obt. serv’t.,

  James Barnes

  The next letter was no more enlightening, but it was far stranger. It began:

  Dear sir,

  Youve’ ben asking after us again, but there’s no need for it. Becaus we do what we’re ment. We do what we promise evry bit. We hav evry Thing still and we have ben keeping our part of the agreement. Dont’ be harrying after my man hes’ a fair man. He wonnt’ ever go to the Queen with less he be pushd.

  Yr srvt,

  Dorcas Reston

  With a little surge of guilt and more than a little foreboding, Fern quickly returned the letters to Colin’s waistcoat. She’d had no right to read them; now that she had, she was more troubled—at herself and their import, both—than self-satisfied. She left the room, and it felt like an escape.

  Colin granted that if Fern’s request was out of spite, perhaps it was deserved, since he had possessed the tastelessness to get rather pissed on his wedding night. He’d had his reasons, of course—he’d never get smashed without good reason—but all things considered, perhaps Fern had some cause to resent it. But he felt rather pleased with himself at how easily he forgave her and how generously he took the blame.

  Taking the blame, however, did not mean that he was willing to walk. And so he swiftly denied her petition even as he made airy allusions to a vague sense of regret, ordering a coach to come as he had already planned.

  As they descended the stoop into the pitilessly brilliant morning light, Colin offered his arm to his wife,
and she hesitated for a moment, looking at him under the shade of her beribboned hat with an inscrutable expression in her pretty eyes. Then she stiffly placed a small gloved hand in the crook of his elbow and stepped out silently beside him. The driver swung the carriage door open, and Colin handed her up automatically before mounting the steps himself.

  It had to be more than just his being drunk that had her on such edge, since that had seemed to bother her so little the night before. He must have insulted her in some way, he decided as he leaned back in the seat across from her. But he could think of nothing that he might have said or done to create this brittleness in her.

  No matter; she would forget whatever trifling concern she had as soon as she saw the Pavilion.

  They approached the palace from the rear, but as soon as the first onion dome appeared over the top of the Unitarian church, Fern’s eyes lit up predictably, and she craned to see better.

  “Why, it must be just like India,” she said with a touch of awe in her voice.

  Colin chuckled, lingering uncertainties swallowed in a wash of self-assurance. “Perhaps.” He patted her hand tolerantly.

  At that touch, though, she stiffened against him, her eyes darting penetratingly across his face before returning to the street in front of them.

  What? Colin thought, his irritation coming back as quickly as it had disappeared. But he kept silent. He hated arguing, and already the beginnings of a foul mood and his lingering headache promised the start of a very bad day. The knowledge that Fern could sway his natural detachment in a darker direction served only to feed his irritation more.

  They reached the arched and domed gate of the Pavilion’s grounds, and Colin handed Fern down out of the carriage. She made a sound like a delighted child, too bright to be real, slipping free of his elbow to dart through the entrance.

  “We must see it from the front,” she declared.

  Colin lengthened his strides to catch up with her, but she skipped merrily past the other clumps of visitors on the walk and headed across the wide expanse of lawn toward a small oval pond. She reached it and turned around, her pale blue skirt swinging out over the water as wisps of hair, already pulled free by the stiff sea breeze, blew across her face. She looked like an eminently fashionable china doll, and just as fragile.