How To School Your Scoundrel, page 26
The sun had shifted, and the light now streamed through the glass panes of the window to bathe the three of them in suffocating heat. The perspiration had already begun to trickle beneath Somerton’s shirt. He rose to his feet and stepped to the window—the same one by which he had consummated his new marriage—and closed the curtains before it. The action seemed strangely final.
How many times had they come together since then? Eighteen days since the vows were spoken. Let us say twice a day on average, though perhaps it was more. Let us say thirty-six acts of union. Thirty-six times he had made love to Luisa, and if he tried, he knew he could remember each one, the place and time and position, the way she had looked and felt and smelled, the sounds she had made. The specific quality of the climax: long and rolling, intense and explosive, some brain-altering combination of the two. Then the aftermath. God, the aftermath. Each time, he lost himself so thoroughly inside her that the return of consciousness, the return of reason, the return of himself came as a blistering and unwelcome shock.
And now, the most unwelcome shock of all: that it was over.
He resumed his seat next to the mute Luisa and said, “I see. And what, exactly, does this signify, in that scheming brain of yours?”
The Duke of Olympia smiled patiently.
“It means, my dears, that the months of exile are over at last. The time has come to act.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Sometime in the night, Luisa woke. The train had stopped.
She rose to a sitting position, nearly bumping her head on the roof of the compartment. “Somerton?” she said softly.
On the floor next to the berths, Quincy raised his moonlit head and let out a soft whine.
Luisa slid carefully down to the floor and glanced at Somerton’s berth below hers, though she knew it was empty. She had known his absence as she knew her own presence. She bent down and stroked Quincy’s head. “Where is he, love? Why have we stopped?”
Why did trains ever stop? No one ever knew; the stops and starts of overnight trains were inscrutable to mortal knowledge. A faulty switch, perhaps.
Or some sort of disturbance.
But that couldn’t be it. Somerton would wake her if there were a disturbance, or a danger of any kind; even if he didn’t, Olympia would, from the compartment next to theirs.
She gave Quincy a last pat, found her dressing gown at the bottom of the berth, and slipped out of the compartment.
She found Somerton outside, on the balcony at the end of the wagon-lit, gazing out the side over an empty moonlit field. He was smoking a cigar, nearly finished. She hesitated and touched his shoulder.
He didn’t flinch. Of course he had perceived her approach.
“You should sleep,” she said.
“You know better than that.”
“You slept well enough in Italy.”
He ground out his cigar and tossed the end on the stones of the railbed. “We’re not in Italy any longer.”
There wasn’t much space on the rail next to him, but she forced herself in anyway, moving aside his steely arm. With a long-suffering sigh, he lifted his hand and placed it down on her other side, enclosed her in the shelter of his shoulder. She breathed in the warm night air, the scent of his skin. The cigar, fading away in the breeze from the mountains. His arm was solid around her, a reassuring weight.
“Do you know why we’re stopped?”
“To let another train pass, I believe. Go back to bed, my dear. God knows, we may have little rest tomorrow.”
“Why,” she said, “do you always call me my dear when you’re being formal, and Markham when you’re feeling some sort of passing affection for me? It seems backward somehow.”
He didn’t reply.
“All right, then. Where are we?”
Somerton nodded across the purple night sky. “We’ve just come out of the mountains in Austria. You can see the peaks to the south. I daresay we’re about two hours away from Huhnhof Baden, once we start up again.”
“And Olympia’s men will meet us there.”
“Yes. The revolutionary police are apparently weakest in the western province, where support for you remains strong. Or so claims Olympia’s intelligence, which I have no reason to doubt.”
“And then we shall simply storm the palace?”
“According to your uncle’s plan, yes.”
“What about your plan? What do you think?”
The shoulder behind her head moved slightly, the flex of a single muscle.
“Well?” she said. “Surely you’ve thought about all this at great length, in that scheming mind of yours. Tell me your thoughts. If nothing else, we’ve always been able to understand each other.”
“This child . . .” He checked himself.
“If there is one.”
“If there is one.” Somerton’s hands tightened around the railing. “As you no doubt comprehend, I’m far better suited for siring children than raising them. Elizabeth and Penhallow, thank God, have made sure I have as little opportunity as possible to contaminate young Philip’s childhood.”
“That’s not true. They’ve promised to arrange visits.” She stopped, because the words sounded so hollow and empty. And she was the one who had asked him to start a new life, a new family. Inevitably, Philip, raised in a different home, would become little more than a distant acquaintance. He would look to Penhallow as his father.
A distant whistle sounded from the north. The other train, perhaps. The one they were waiting to let pass.
When Somerton spoke, his voice was flat. “I want to make things perfectly clear, so there is no question of disappointment and recrimination later. I am not suited to fatherhood. I shall take as limited a role as possible in the rearing of this child, once it’s born.”
“I . . . I don’t understand you.”
“In my profession, I assign men to the tasks for which they’re best inclined. I would be a fool, for example, to send a man skilled at forgery to perform a delicate assassination.”
“Are you really comparing fatherhood to assassination?” She tried to laugh, but her chest was too hollow.
“Merely an analogy. You will undoubtedly want more children, of course, and I have no objection to continued conjugal intercourse, once you’re safely delivered and the child properly weaned . . .”
“Are you quite mad?”
“I shall not stray to another bed in the meantime, if that’s what concerns you. I have learned the value of self-control in these matters.”
“How lucky for me.”
“But I cannot allow myself to repeat the mistakes that led to such a disastrous conclusion seven weeks ago.”
She tried to pull away, but his arm caged her in. How could he speak so coldly, and yet require her continued physical closeness? “On the contrary, it seems to me you’re doing exactly that. A semi-detached marriage, a semi-detached child.”
“It’s not the same at all,” he said. “You and I have a remarkable partnership, or so I flatter myself. Mutual respect, a satisfactory sexual connection.”
“Satisfactory!”
“All in all, the foundation of a happy marriage.”
“You don’t sound happy at all.”
“Happiness, my dear, was never in my nature. Let us say, a marriage that serves its purpose well, and does as little as possible to cause grief to either party.”
“How very alluring.”
“My dear, I cannot give you what I don’t own.”
“Perhaps you don’t know what you really own. Perhaps you simply have no idea how to drag it out of the attics of your soul.”
He was quiet. The rails began to sing. A faint rumble came down through the air, a rushing of the atmosphere.
“You have chosen rather ill, you know.” His voice was still flat, still devoid of any particular emotion.
“Chosen what ill?”
“Me.”
She could have borne it if he said the word morosely, the result of a passing mood, of the melancholy effect of moonlight on a mountain peak. But he was so frighteningly matter-of-fact, as if he’d thought the matter through carefully and come to a cold and logical conclusion.
“Do you know, just before I joined you here, I was lying in my berth thinking exactly the opposite,” she said. “I have one of the most cunning intelligence masterminds in Europe as my consort, a ruthless and relentless man, skilled and inexhaustible in bed, and he has already perhaps given me an heir. I have seen with my own eyes to what lengths he will go, in order to protect me. My throne and my people’s future assured, all in one efficient stroke.”
“You’re mistaken. I’m a failed husband and an inept father, and my last grand intelligence scheme ended in near-fatal disaster.” He opened up his palms. “God knows what I shall do to you, in the hours ahead. In the years ahead, if we make it that far. My star, I believe, has passed. Yours is still rising.”
“What bloody melancholy rubbish. It must have been the wine in the dining car. Absolutely contemptible stuff. I shall write to the company myself.”
He went on staring at his hands, his massive palms, crisscrossed with deep lines and patched with calluses.
She covered them with hers. “I trust these hands. I trust you.”
He drew his hands away from her grip and placed them back on the railing. “In any case, it’s too late to turn back. The die is apparently cast.”
The rumbling grew louder, a cacophony of machine and steam and grinding steel. The train began to shiver. Luisa braced her hands on the rail. Just before the impact, she moved her head a quarter turn into Somerton’s protective shoulder.
The opposite train thundered rhythmically by, whooshing and rattling, coach after coach. Luisa’s left ear filled with palpable noise, while her right burrowed into the soft linen of Somerton’s shirt, the reassuring tension of his shoulder.
Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the train was gone. The air sighed, the rails shrieked softly.
Peace crept over Luisa’s heart, as the noise receded. A strange sensation. She thought of the gentle touch of Somerton’s lips in her hair the morning after they were married. The tender way he had carried her upstairs, when she was ill in Northamptonshire.
How could that man possibly be the same one who held her now? Who had just spoken those cold words?
Which one did she believe? Which one had she married?
“We should be moving soon,” said Somerton.
Luisa filled her lungs with clean, silvery air. With hope. “Yes. Onward to Huhnhof. And then it will all be behind us at last. We storm the palace, we secure the throne once more, we . . .”
“I beg your pardon. We?”
“You and me and Olympia. And any loyal supports who will join us.”
“My dear, you’re quite mistaken.” He removed his hand from the rail and laid it upon her shoulder. “Olympia and I shall storm the palace, as you put it. You shall remain where you’re hidden.”
“I have no intention of . . .”
“This is not your particular area of expertise, my dear . . .”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Whoever the devil you are. You are of immense value to the people of your country, and you will stay in a place of safety until these damned revolutionaries have been cleared out, every last one of them.”
Clean, silvery air, indeed. Hope, indeed.
“I see.” She ducked beneath his arm and turned to the door. “I suppose that’s that, then. Protect the queen at all costs.”
“My dear . . .”
She flung open the door.
“Markham. My dear Markham.” He was still facing the field. His proud Roman nose was tilted upward, as if he were testing the breeze. “You are also of immense value to me.”
She stood with her hand on the door handle, watching the glint of moonlight on his dark hair.
Damn him to hell. How did he do that?
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said softly, “because I rather believe I couldn’t live without you.”
She walked inside the coach and let the door fall shut behind her, just as the whistle sounded a long and keening cry, and the coach lurched forward at last.
• • •
Somerton found his bride in his berth, curled up against the wall. Her striped pajamas peeked out above the top of his blanket, and Quincy lay in a contented ball at her feet.
“Stubborn little fool,” he muttered. He tightened the belt of his dressing gown and left the compartment.
Next door, Olympia was fast asleep. His contented snores made the satisfaction all the greater when Somerton pounded on the window of his compartment and interrupted them.
“Kicked you out, has she?” the duke said, by way of greeting.
“On the contrary. She’s sleeping soundly in my berth this instant.” Which was not a lie, after all.
Olympia lifted his gray eyebrows and gestured. “Won’t you come in, Your Highness?”
The words jolted Somerton, though he maintained his habitual grim expression. The air inside the compartment was stuffy and smelled of sleep. He went to the window and cracked it open. The instant rush of air cooled his nerves.
“Make it quick, then, for God’s sake. An old man needs his rest.”
“Your plans. You’re quite sure of them?”
“As certain as these things are. The people are dissatisfied with the quasi-cabal of anarchists ruling them from the comfort of Holstein Castle. They begin to realize that the early promises have not been delivered, nor will they be, and that the wealth of the country is very probably being milked for the purposes of the Revolutionary Brigade itself. They particularly dislike this secret police now in place.”
“The leader of which is now missing.”
“Yes. I believe him to be traveling in Miss Dingleby’s party, for England.”
“Their purpose?”
“Why, to capture Stefanie, of course. She’s the one princess Dingleby knows where to find, at present. Given the late unrest in the provinces, the near-revolt in Huhnhof, the cabal has apparently realized a figurehead of some kind is necessary, a relic of the old days, to pacify the people.”
Somerton turned from the window. Olympia was leaning against the berth, arms crossed, face lined with weariness. But the eyes were still bright and blue, still catching every detail of the man and the scene before him.
“You know this for certain?”
“So claims my source.”
“And what precautions have you taken on Princess Stefanie’s behalf? My wife harbors a great deal of affection for her sisters.”
Olympia smiled. “Yes, she does. I have sent telegrams. Stefanie will be protected. The judicial proceedings of her lover, it seems, have taken an unexpected turn for the better, and I expect they shall shortly be married. The sooner the better, by the way, from the point of view of a legitimate succession.”
“And the house where Luisa will stay, until we have the situation at the castle under control. Its owners are beyond suspicion?”
Olympia levered himself away from the berth and stretched his arms upward with a barely suppressed yawn. Between his height and the low ceiling, he didn’t get very far. “Oh, no one is above suspicion, my dear fellow. You should know that.”
“And yet you’ve trusted me, of all people, with your most priceless jewel.”
“Did I make a mistake, Lord Somerton?”
He folded his arms across his chest. The silk dressing robe slipped against the skin of his hands. “Her Highness may be with child,” he said.
Another elegant elevation of the ducal eyebrows. “Indeed? Excellent work. Short work, but excellent.”
“Save your congratulations. It’s quite early yet, but we have reason to hope. Her safety, therefore, is paramount in this endeavor. I need your assurance that she will be placed in no danger whatsoever.”
“You, of all people, know I can’t give you that assurance.”
“What safeguards are available? Damn it all, man. She’s your niece!”
Olympia’s hand came to rest on the berth beside him. His expression gentled into compassion. “My dear fellow. Nothing in this world is certain. Don’t you know that? We must simply do our best, we must strive for the ideal, in hopes that we will do some little good in this world and find our ultimate justice in the Hereafter.”
Somerton parted his lips to reply, but his throat was too stiff.
Olympia stepped forward and laid his hand on the earl’s shoulder. “Go back to your berth and make love to your wife, if you can manage it on this damned rattling contraption. Fall asleep in her arms. Be thankful for the gift God has given you.”
The weight of Olympia’s grip bore into his shoulder. Somerton lifted his hand and picked the ducal fingers delicately from his dressing gown.
“Thank you for the advice, my dear uncle,” he said, and started for the door.
“Bloody idiot,” said Olympia.
• • •
The train rolled into Huhnhof Baden just before sunrise. A gentle hand shook Luisa awake at twelve minutes to six. “Markham, it’s time,” said her husband.
He was dressed and shaved, his cheeks still damp. He helped her out of her pajamas and into her shirt and trousers, wrapping the linen bandage around her breasts without a word, without a single untoward brush of his fingers.
A sharp knock hit the compartment door. “Huhnhof Baden!” called the steward.
The valise was already packed. Somerton lifted it in one hand and opened the door with the other. “After you, my dear.”
Luisa blinked her eyes as they stepped onto the familiar platform, on which she had alighted so many times before, to waiting bouquets from the mayor’s daughters and an enthusiastic oompah from the local Huhnhof philharmonic. This morning, however, the platform was deserted, except for the conductor and a pair of passengers alighting at the other end of the train. A thin line of orange on the exposed eastern horizon suggested the coming sunrise. “This way,” Olympia said brusquely, and they hurried after him down the platform and through the station to the stone steps outside, where a modest carriage waited by the curb, pulled by a single brown horse with sloping ears.
