Dark Tides Page 26

  “So why d’you stay here, Mrs. Rose?” Ned asked her. “Fearing it as you do? Why not go home when your indentures end?”

  She turned her head away from him, so that her grim expression was hidden by the wings of her cap. “Same reason as everyone,” she said tightly. “I came in the first place as I had hopes of a better life. God called me and my master ordered me. I didn’t know it would be like this. I hoped for better, I still hope. And I don’t have the money for my passage back home anyway.”

  NOVEMBER 1670, LONDON

  Livia was determined to arrive at Avery House looking her best, and spent the shillings Alys had given her for her earrings on a waterman to take her to the private water stairs at Avery House. She tipped him to carry her up the green wet steps so that her black silk shoes would not get wet. “Oughter wear boots,” he remarked sourly.

  She gave him a penny without replying to him, and turned away to walk through the orchard, past the garden statues and the pretty marble fawn, and up the stone steps to the handsome terrace and the big glazed doors at the rear of the house.

  Sir James was waiting to bow; but she slid into his arms and raised her face for his kiss, without even taking off her bonnet. He could not step back and kiss her hand, she was in his arms in a moment. The broad wings of the bonnet meant that he could not peck her on the cheek; there was nothing he could do but return her kiss and feel, with astounded desire, her warm lips part, as he tasted her mouth and the liquid softness of her tongue, which licked his. Raised as a celibate, and lately as a widower, he felt Livia’s shameless sensuality like a physical shock. He felt an immediate burn of desire that drove all doubts from his mind. He tightened his grip on her and felt her lean back against his arm, as if he could have her, right there, on the terrace.

  He forced himself to release her and step back from her, though he was breathless with desire, to find her eyes were bright, and she was laughing. “Allora!” she said delightedly. “I see that we must marry at once! We will shock the servants. Is this how you Englishmen greet your fiancées?”

  “Forgive me!” At once, he was ashamed of his own need.

  She laughed and untied her bonnet strings, the wide silk bow unfolding and tumbling down, reminding him of a petticoat opening on nakedness. He flushed at the thought and hoped that she did not guess it.

  “No, there is nothing to forgive!” she assured him. She lifted the bonnet from her head and held it carelessly, swinging by the ribbons, so the black plume brushed the floor. “I am so glad to be an English wife again, you know we say in Italy that the only nation that loves their wives are the English? I cannot wait for our wedding day.” She stepped a little closer so he could hear her whisper: “I cannot wait for our wedding night.”

  His desire for her drove any caution from his mind. “Oh, Livia… I…”

  She turned and preceded him into the house without invitation, opening the glass door to his study and sitting in his own high-backed chair before his desk as if she were already his wife. She picked up the replies to the tea party and glanced through them. He seated himself on the visitor’s chair, rather glad to have the desk between them. “Will you take some ale? Or wine and water? Or tea?” he asked.

  “Shall we have ratafia again?” She smiled at him. “I think I will love the taste of it forever, as it will always remind me of last time I was here, when you told me you loved me and asked me to be your wife.”

  He served them both from the bottle on the sideboard and spoke as his back was turned. “My brother-in-law, George, wrote to me,” he said. “He apologized for what he had said.”

  “As he should,” she agreed smoothly. “I daresay we will forgive him, but never forget his rudeness to me.”

  He had to turn to hand her the glass. He was grave. “He did not repeat his challenge to the authenticity of the statues; but, my dear, I do fear…”

  Her smile was warm but her eyes were very bright. “You fear?” She laughed. “I don’t want a fearful husband!”

  “Any doubt about their authenticity would be most embarrassing,” he said, cautiously picking his words. He hardly knew what to say to her. He hoped that she understood at once that the thought of selling dubious goods, from his family home, to his own friends was unbearable to him. “I can’t put it too strongly. If there is any doubt at all…”

  “It’s only one opinion,” she said, as if that were the point. “And if he says he will not repeat it…”

  “If there is any doubt about any one of the antiquities, they must all be withdrawn from sale,” he said firmly. “I cannot be in the position that I am selling, at a profit, to my friends, something which might be—”

  “Might be what?” She dared him to speak out.

  “Uncertain?”

  “What do you mean?” she demanded flatly.

  He swallowed. “False.”

  The word dropped into the room like a stone into a deep well. She widened her eyes at him; but said nothing.

  “In any way,” he faltered. “Of course, without your knowing… nobody is saying that you…”

  “You see yourself, that they are all things of supreme beauty,” she pointed out.

  “I do. But are they…?”

  “Lustrous,” she said. “With the luster of beautiful age.”

  “They are surprisingly well polished. For things so old…”

  “They were chosen by my first husband, a famed and most tasteful patron of the arts, out of all the things that he could have bought with his vast fortune. Each object you have here, he saw, and considered, and judged it to be worthy of his collection.”

  “Could he have been misled?”

  “No.”

  “Could someone have substituted a false one for his good one, a copy of an original, perhaps after his death? Or when the goods were stored? Or when they were shipped here to you?”

  “No,” she stated flatly, though they both knew she could not possibly know.

  “It’s not likely that my brother-in-law is wrong,” he said very quietly. “He is an authority. If he says that some of the Caesar heads are copies, even very good copies, then we must listen to him. My dear, he is certainly right.”

  “No, he is not,” she said flatly. “It is not possible that my antiquities are not good. And anyway, we do not have to listen to him. I certainly am not going to listen to him. He speaks to you, not to me. It is you who are going to have to choose who you believe. The brother of your dead wife, who resents your new happiness? Or your promised wife? Your betrothed wife?”

  She saw the dilemma he was in and tightened it a notch. “You have offered me your good name and your fortune and I bring you all of mine. These are your antiquities now, are you going to undermine your own honor? Are they to be false, and you to be false, when you have spent your life struggling to be true?”

  “A matter of honor?” He could hardly follow her. “How is it a matter of my honor?”

  “They are your antiquities!” she exclaimed impatiently. “You are my husband! What is mine is yours. Would you handle anything but a true thing? Have you become some sort of mountebank?”

  “Of course not!” he exclaimed. “Of course I am not!”

  “Well! There you are!” she said simply, as if the discussion was completely ended and he had agreed with her.

  They finished their wine in silence, and he glanced at her face to see if she was as his first wife had been: silently, chillingly sulky; but she returned him a radiant smile, as if there were nothing wrong, and then she asked him to show her around the house. As the mistress-to-be she wanted to see it from attic bedrooms to cellars, and his spirits rose as he showed her the wine stocks in the cellar, each carefully racked and numbered. “Collected by my father and my grandfather and his father,” he told her.

  She had seen far greater cellars in the vineyards around her home where they had been making wine for centuries and keeping only the best; but she nodded as if she were hugely impressed. “And nobody tells you they are not
good!” she said, as if it were a shared joke.

  He showed her the imposing rooms on the ground floor that led off the grand marble hall: the dining room, the parlor, and the receiving room with the double doors that could be thrown open to the hall.

  “But this is a perfect house for grand parties!” she exclaimed.

  “My mother and father entertained the king here,” he said. “The king and the whole court.”

  “Oh, we will do that,” she said instantly.

  “That was the old king,” he corrected. “King Charles, not his son. I don’t think the court is a suitable place for a lady now.”

  She looked up into his face and reached up and patted his cheek. “We will be grand,” she said. “And we will entertain the king. There will be no impropriety in your house, but we will take our place where we belong.”

  He felt a leap of hope that she might make his house the place that it should be, that somehow the king and the country would be as they should be, that the old days would be truly restored to him, that he would not have to feel so many doubts about this shallow polished replica of his old life. He took her hand to lead her up the stairs to see the bedrooms. They were all shrouded in linen sheets to keep out the moths and the dust. Only in his own room, facing over the garden and the river, was the bed made up, and the shutters open to the sunshine.

  “You sleep here?” she asked, leaning against the bed.

  “I do.”

  “And not in the big bedroom with the four-poster bed?”

  “That was the room I shared with my wife. It is too big for one man, and I don’t come to London very often.”

  “But we shall use that one, the biggest bedroom?”

  “Yes,” he said. “When we visit London. And we must decide when our wedding should be. We shall marry at my home, Northside Manor in Yorkshire. I shall go to my home and send for you and we shall have the banns called in my parish church.”

  “I thought we would marry at once!” she said. “Didn’t we agree at once?”

  “We did, but I cannot,” he started.

  Her gaze was as sharp as a knife. “You promised me.”

  “I have to be married in my own parish,” he said gently. “I cannot be married in secret, in a hurry, as if we had something to hide. I have to be married at the church where all my family have been baptized and married and buried.”

  “Then shall we go to your home at once?”

  “I will have to make it ready…” He suddenly checked as a thought struck him. “You are Protestant? You are of the reformed religion?”

  She had not thought of this. “I am Roman Catholic,” she admitted. “But I have no objection…”

  “I didn’t think! Before we can be married, you will have to be instructed and confirmed in the English church,” he said. “I will have to find you a minister here, in London, to instruct you. When he has seen you through baptism and confirmation, you shall come to Northside Manor, to me, and we will marry.”

  “There’s no need…”

  “My dear, it has to be done.”

  “I can take baptism at once. Surely I can be baptized tomorrow!”

  “Not without instruction. The religion is one of understanding, not simply faith.”

  She could not hide her irritation. “But how long is all this going to take?” she demanded.

  He thought for a moment. “Six months? No more than a year.”

  “We can’t wait a year to be married!” she exclaimed shrilly.

  “Why not? We are young.”

  “But we want a child at once!”

  He took her hand and kissed it. “A true Avery, born of a Protestant father and mother and baptized into the church in Northallerton parish.”

  “But I thought you were a Roman Catholic anyway?”

  “I was raised in the true—” He cut short the heretical phrase. “I told you I was raised as a Roman Catholic, but my parents and I had to surrender our faith to come home and reclaim our lands. It was an act that was very painful to me, very costly to my pride and my soul. It felt wrong, it still tears at me. But I will allow no doubt over my ownership of my lands, and over the inheritance of my son. As a Roman Catholic I would be barred from public office, but I was born to serve and lead my community. I am honor bound to take up my duties. So there can never be any question about my wife and my heir. You will have to convert immediately—even little Matteo will have to be baptized into the Church of England. I can have no doubt over the affiliation of anyone in my household.”

  She held up her hands. “Stop! Stop!” she said urgently. “Don’t be so serious, my darling, so grave about a happy matter! We will marry in whatever church you like, and Matteo can be christened at the same time. He can take your name and be your son. But I cannot wait forever. We must marry this year, before Christmas. I cannot survive winter in that dreadful little warehouse—you have no idea how uncomfortable and crowded it is. I am sure I would be ill, it would make me ill, I have to be Lady Avery before the winter sets in.”

  “Can’t you move?” he asked uneasily. “Move house, if it is so sickly? Why d’you need my name? Why would it make any difference? And surely, my dear, Matteo must keep his father’s name. Wouldn’t they think I was taking him from them?”

  She saw at once that she had gone too fast for him, and she hid her impatience. She stepped closer and put her hands on the rich velvet of the lapels of his jacket. “I want your love and protection, I want to be somewhere warm,” she whispered. “That’s all I’m thinking. Somewhere warm with you. Do you not want me there, in your cold northern nights? When the wind howls outside and the snow drifts up to the door, will you not want me for company? For joy?”

  She put her hands at the back of his neck and he felt a shiver all down his spine, as if she had touched the very core of his body; at once he lost his train of thought and all caution. She pulled his head towards her as if for a kiss; but as he bent forward she leaned back, pulling his mouth to her exposed throat, and let herself fall back on the bed and he, following her, was on top of her in a moment. His instinct was to rise, to apologize, but she kept her grip on him, wrapping her arms around him, opening her mouth and arching her back so she pressed against the length of him, until with a gasp he decided that he could not stop himself. Hungry to feel her, desperate to be inside her, he fumbled at his breeches as she pulled up her dark mourning silk gown, her silk petticoat, and he entered her with a groan of pleasure. At once she moved against him, urging him on.

  “My God! Forgive me!” he said the moment he returned to awareness. “Forgive me! I should never! I did not mean…”

  For a moment she was quite still and then she languidly turned her head towards him. As she opened her dark eyes she saw his troubled face and realized that she must reassure him. At once she found the right words: “Oh, I too am in the wrong,” she said remorsefully. “For it was I who kissed you. I felt such a longing…”

  He stood up at once, arranging his clothes, bitterly ashamed of himself. “And in my house! When you are my guest!” he said almost to himself. “In my care. Under my protection! God forgive me…”

  “Ah well,” she said, sitting up and rearranging her cap. “We are engaged to marry, after all. There is no great sin in it.”

  He could not understand her calmness at the assault on her honor. “No sin! But such a breach of… Forgive me, Livia. Did I hurt you?”

  She realized that he was deeply shocked and that she must agree. She jumped up from the bed as if she were ashamed of lying back. She drooped her head so that all he could see was the enchanting line of her dark eyebrows and the dark eyelashes on her cheek. “Of course, you hurt me a little. It is only to be expected. A man such as you…” She turned her face to hide her blush.

  “I’m a brute.” He fell to his knees before her, and she leaned forward and gathered his head between her full breasts so he smelled her perfume of rose petals and the warmth of her skin, and desire for her rose up again.

&nb
sp; “But we have to marry at once now,” she whispered to him. “There can be no delaying.”

  “Yes, yes,” he agreed, his lips at the smooth skin of her neck, as she guided his hand to her breast under the tight silk bodice.

  “Just think! We might have conceived a child already!” she whispered with a lilt to her voice. “We will have to marry now.”

  “My God! Yes,” he said. “Of course. Livia, trust me! Your name, your honor, is safe with me. Believe me! I shall go to Northallerton at once, and get the banns called. I shall send for you as soon as I can. And in the meantime I will get a minister to instruct you here in London, and tell him that you must convert at once. I need not say why: there are many people who convert to avoid the penalties. And Matteo can be christened as you say, when we are married…”

  She rose to her feet and shook out her crumpled black gown. “Very well,” she said, smiling. “Of course, it shall be just as you wish, my love. We shall do it just as you want. As long as it is at once. Before Christmas.”

  He took her hand and pressed kisses into it. “You forgive me?”

  Sweetly, she brought her face to their clasped hands and kissed his fingers in reply. “You are my husband,” she whispered. “I will always forgive you, everything.”

  * * *

  All was ready for their guests to come. There were only half a dozen gentlemen, and they had no interest in the tea that Livia insisted on serving. Two of them took glasses of brandy with them as they walked in the garden and looked at the statues, at the apple trees bowing over rotting fallen fruits and the river beyond. The rest of them took cold Rhenish wine and talked to Livia in the gallery.

  Nobody mentioned money, and Livia, glancing at James, realized that he was quite incapable of broaching the subject to these, his friends, even when they had come to his house to complete the purchase.

  She tucked her hand in the arm of Sir Morris, an ugly middle-aged man in an elaborately expensive coat, and smiled up at him. “You must forgive my boldness,” she said. “But these antiquities are my dower. I have to sell them for the benefit of my little son. I cannot leave it to anyone else, nobody in England but rare connoisseurs like you understands marble, nobody outside Italy would understand their value. So I must talk to you directly.”