Page 40 of Ondine

Sunlight was pouring into the room when she awoke, streams that danced from the panes upon her.

Memory of the night past came upon her in a warm rush, and still dazed with sleep, she smiled, smug and pleased with that memory.

Warwick! Ah, memory of his face, his touch, was all that came to her with that first light.

Had he been beside her, she might well have sighed with the complacent pleasure of a kitten and cast herself awestruck against him.

But he was not beside her, and as she opened her eyes more fully, she saw him at last.

He stood by the window, completely dressed down to buckled shoes and plumed hat. His foot rested upon the rung of a chair, his thumbs locked into breeches, and he stared darkly and pensively out upon the brightness of the day.

Her heart first soared with the sight of him, then seemed to shatter like the surf against rocks as the grimness of his taut features worked into her mind.

She drew her covers up; she was uneasy, though she knew not why. Her smile slowly faded just as he turned to her.

“Warwick—”

He doffed his hat and bowed low, without mockery this morning, yet with something far worse: the greatest reserve, the most chilling distance.

“My lady, I do apologize for my most atrocious manners of last eve. I fear I drank too deeply, and too well, and matters here are tense at best. Do forgive me.”

She stared at him blankly, unbelievingly. Then she raised her own shield of ice to combat the fever of pain, and twisted with her covering so that her back was to him.

“Just do get out of here, please.”

He did not move; he hesitated. Then he came to her back, and she shivered as she felt the line his finger drew there.

“I didn’t know, er . . . I did not suspect . . .”

She swung around, staring at him. “Know what?”

He grated out some impatient sound, a barely articulate oath. “For God’s sake, girl, I married you off the gallows!”

“And . . . ?” she demanded warily, her temper instinctively growing as she sought his meaning.

“I did not expect to find a maid, untouched, but a woman of certain experience.”

“What? Oh! ” She forgot that he was completely clad, that her covers were her only defense, and sat to throw her pillow hard against him. He caught it with a mere tightening of his mouth.

“My God, you’d come from Newgate—”

“Newgate! Ah, yes, my lord of Chatham! I came from Newgate. How dare you assume that all those wretches dragged to that horrid place are whores, since they be debtors or beggars—”

“Or liars, cutthroats, and thieves? Forgive what was stolen, Countess, by a drunken boor; had I known you were among the great virtuous masses of Newgate, I’d never have erred.

And then, Countess, there was the matter of the king, you see.

You swayed and laughed and teased with him like a mistress well versed in the arts. ”

Retrieving her covers, Ondine lowered her head. “Get out!”

He bowed low to her once again, and she hated him for it and for the vibrant sarcasm in his words.

“As I said, my manners were atrocious. I shall endeavor, madam, to improve them in the future.”

He turned then and strode to the door, but paused there. “I’ve business with the king this day and the next, yet now that I am here, I’ve no wish to stay longer than I must. Be prepared to leave, for I intend to cut short our stay as much as possible.”

He opened the door and closed it behind himself. Ondine stared after him, still incredulous. Tears burned her eyes, and she dug her fingers into the sheets, fighting them. She would never, never understand him. Never in a thousand years . . .

She turned about, burying her head into the pillow as a sob tore from her. How could she have been so foolish as to forget? Forget that his reputation was a rage about court, that it seemed that one woman was but the same as another to him.

She pushed her face from the pillow at last. “Bastard! Bastard!” she hissed, miserably clenching her eyes together. She had allowed herself to care . . .

She rose, shivering as she rushed naked to the pitcher and bowl. She splashed water brutally against her face.

The king had suggested she leave him, and leave him she surely would. Newgate whore, indeed! She was a duchess in her own right, and, by God, she would prove it and he would eat the dust that flew from her heels.

She paused then, shivering once again. No. He had saved her life in a devil’s bargain she still did not understand. She was in his debt. She would pay that debt, for it was owed. But when it was paid in full, she would depart as swiftly as the wind.

* * *

Warwick spent the day in the king’s chambers, listening as advisors warned Charles about the fear of Papists, still riding high in England. The king’s face was set, for it was his brother, James, heir to the crown, whom they attacked.

Charles despised intolerance; he had a leaning toward Catholicism himself—yet a penchant for his throne that kept him ever wary and prudent. As his maternal grandfather—the great Henry IV—had once claimed, “Paris for a Mass!” Charles would remain a Protestant king to remain a king.

“Leave off with this endless debate!” Charles said wearily. “We’ve graver matters at stake!”

And so the business of the kingdom turned to finance, another endless debate, for Charles was nearly always in need of funding.

Warwick lost touch with the voices around him.

He sat at apparent attention; he was nothing but a marble presence.

His thoughts—remorse, shame, hunger, and longing—consumed him, and he feared he would never escape the tangle of emotion.

She haunted him more now that the scent and sight and sound and touch of her were real in his memory, so very real that he could see all of her, know the detail, the beauty . . .

He had all but attacked her. His wife. The wretched ragamuffin he had plucked from the streets—the woman he had sworn to protect, but never love.

Protect! Dear God, from what? Had he gone insane?

What had he expected to prove here? Hardgrave was in attendance, as well as the lady Anne.

Yet how could Anne whisper to Ondine in the halls of Chatham Manor? How could Hardgrave?

Hardgrave was so near, a neighbor. There were hidden chambers and false doors within Chatham.

But the hounds would not accept a stranger in the hall, nor could Warwick imagine Hardgrave, with his bulk, scampering through the halls to whisper to his wife!

His head was pounding. He had wronged Ondine; wronged her gravely. She had been as chaste as the snow, yet would be no more when he released her from this travesty into which he had summoned her.

Could he release her? He did not think that he could . . .

God rot it all! But he had never felt this passion so deep, it ruled all thought, dulling the mind and tricking the actions!

This envy, this jealousy . . . this absolute sense of possession.

It was a painful thing. It tore at the gut and the heart and the soul, and he wished fervently that he’d never seen her face, never felt her spell entrap him.

Think, man, it was time to watch and judge.

Anne was as jealous as a spiteful little cat, pleading, cajoling, threatening.

Hardgrave and Warwick were keeping their distance, like great wary bears.

Hardgrave watched Ondine with hunger lacing his eyes, but what man did not?

It had all been worthless. All that he had managed was a time of agony, seeing his wife the center of endless desire—his own! Taking her . . .

But he could not do so again. He was no rapist, no seducer of innocents. Nor did he dare love her, though love her he did. She didn’t know his bargain, but it had been sealed in his heart. She had been bait for a killer, and for that she was due his greatest debt, her life and her freedom.

Two more nights of misery.

No, there was endless misery. For at Chatham she would still be near.

But she would have her own chamber. He could not go to her again; it would not be fair.

Two more days. Days of watching her laugh and smile and charm everyone around her. Days of feeling the coldness of her gaze when it fell upon him. Days of watching Anne eye her in constant and dangerous speculation, while Hardgrave stared after her with lust and cunning in his eyes.

On a sudden thought Warwick made the announcement, the next day, of his coming heir at court. Charles and Catherine were thrilled.

Anne narrowed her cat’s eyes furiously.

Hardgrave appeared to plot all the more.

Ondine stared at him, as if her eyes were glittering steel swords and she would gladly use them to disembowel him.

But nothing happened, except that his temper grew shorter as he tried to sleep upon the settee, tried not to think that just beyond the door she breathed and slept, that beneath her nightdress she was warm and supple and curved for a man’s pleasure, that she was a woman of grace and passion that raged deeper than even he had imagined . . .

On the third day they left before the sun had risen. Warwick was atop the carriage with Jake; Ondine was alone inside of it.

They reached Chatham, and Warwick found his life ever more miserable. He could not leave her at night, for it was here that she had claimed the whisperer came to her, calling her.

And she was so cool, so aloof and polite, cordial, moving about with the rustle of her skirts, the scent of her perfume, her chin held high, her eyes sweet enigmas.

She spoke as if they were acquaintances, and she kept her distance most serenely.

She laughed and smiled and chatted with Justin and Clinton.

Mathilda came to adore her more and more.

Warwick grew more moody, more reserved, stiff and straight and cold as ice . . . ice that housed a fire. He could not break the spell, change the beguilement. Again, he felt something in him simmer, and it was dangerous, so dangerous . . .

* * *