Page 42 of Ondine
Ondine spoke no more at the stables, except to thank Clinton for helping her from the mare.
She turned her back before Warwick and Justin had dismounted from their horses, and hurried back to the house.
She didn’t have to turn around to know that her husband was close on her heels, but he made no attempt to stop her.
Mathilda was in the entryway, there to warn Warwick that Monsieur Deauvin from Bruges awaited him in his office. She paused in her second sentence to stare at Ondine’s state of disrepair. “Oh, milady! What happened?”
“Nothing, really nothing at all, thank you,” Ondine replied, striding past her for the staircase.
She knew that Warwick stayed below; she heard him ask refreshments be sent to his study for himself and his guest. But seconds later she heard the tread of footsteps behind her.
Without turning she knew that Jake had taken his place as watchdog once again.
She slammed into the music room, felt no apology as she rifled through Warwick’s desk to procure a bottle of port, then smiled bitterly as she threw the door back open, confronting Jake with the bottle.
“Would you like a drink, Jake? Seems a pity you must suffer constant boredom due to my presence.”
“I’m—uh—seldom bored, milady,” he mumbled quickly.
“Oh, but you are!” Ondine protested. “You, Jake, are a pleasant man with wit as well as loyalty, and I do think it an eternal shame that you have chained yourself for life to that beastial viper, the Earl of North Lambria!”
Jake grinned at her, apparently unoffended—and equally unaffected by her speech. “You’ve straws or grass or something in your hair, milady. Shall I send for your maid?”
“No!”
Ondine smiled sweetly and closed the door again.
Muttering, she passed through Warwick’s bedroom and the elaborate bath into her own chamber, carelessly shedding her gown and donning a new one, then stroking her hair endlessly before the mirror until the grass and twigs were all removed and it again shone like fire.
Dear God! That she could understand anything at all in this household!
First, there was a subservient housekeeper who was an illegitimate relative; then there was Clinton, whose illegitimacy didn’t seem to bother him in the least; and finally there was Justin—an easygoing rake, fond of his brother, fond of tormenting him, too!
Then, too, there was a whisperer who crawled the halls—and disappeared into thin air—in addition to a lascivious neighbor with whom Warwick had already done battle.
And of course she couldn’t forget lady Anne, an ex-mistress, wasn’t she?
Ah, but she didn’t intend to remain an “ex,” and there’s the rub of it!
Oh, they were all insane, and at the top of the group was Warwick himself, striding in upon her to take her in anger, then dragging her back to ignore and chastise her!
She realized that her hand, with her fingers curled taut around the brush, still trembled with a score of emotions.
“Oh, I do hate you! I hate you, vile beast!” she swore out loud.
Then she brushed, and clenched her eyes tightly together, because she knew that not to be the case at all, and she could not bear that she—in truth the Duchess of Rochester, the once proud and independent Ondine!
—could have stooped to loving a man who might touch her, yet would never love in return.
“Oh, my lord, I will have my revenge on you yet!” she swore, stamping her foot. She tossed the brush across the room, watching it land on the bed. Then she swirled around. She could not stay in the room.
Jake made no pretense of doing anything other than watching her room when she came sailing out once again.
“The garden, I think, Jake.”
“But you brought in flowers for the house this morning—”
A small wry smile curled into his lips at the admission that he had watched her all day. Surely they both knew it! There was nothing to hide. Jake was about unless Warwick himself stood over her.
“Then I shall bring flowers to the chapel!” she announced, and he was left with no other choice than to follow her down the grand stairway once again.
At the foot of the stairs she was hailed once more by Mathilda, who came anxiously racing toward her.
“Milady! A spill from a horse and you are up and about again! You must lie down. you must take care!”
Ondine shook her head in confusion. “Mathilda, I assure you that I am fine.”
“But the babe! You should look to yourself!”
“Pardon?”
“Your condition, my lady!”
Condition, my foot! Ondine thought furiously. Oh, God, she was forever forgetting that she was supposed to be with child!
“I’m fine, Mathilda, honestly,” she said gently. “I’m just going to the garden.”
“I shall bring you goat’s milk later.”
“Wonderful,” Ondine murmured. She forced herself to smile, but could no longer abide the manor and so hurried past Mathilda.
She plucked rich red roses from the gardens in back, helped by Old Tim, who provided her with gloves and a basket. When Old Tim disappeared into a small storage shed, Jake came around from the corner of it, panting a bit.
“I do love roses!” Ondine called to him.
He nodded bleakly.
With her basket filled, Ondine swirled about and hurried around the house to enter the chapel from the front. She saw Jake in hurried pursuit, smiled, and closed the doors behind her. Poor Jake! But then he chose to serve his master!
With the doors closed behind her, Ondine paused, leaning against them to survey the chapel.
It was a beautiful place with its wonderful stained glass windows and altar sculptures in marble and glass.
The afternoon was waning now, but still sunlight flickered through the stained glass in rainbow hues.
There was shadow and a pastel glow, and Ondine thought that here one might truly commune with a more ethereal world.
She pushed away from the door, intending to head straight for the main altar. But she did not; she paused along the way, observing the monuments. The most recent memorialized the old lord and lady, and Ondine found herself musing on what they must have been like to have parented Warwick and Justin.
She studied the monument to the Earl and Countess of Chatham who had come before them, he who had died upon the battlefield in defense of Charles I, and she who had died in his wake, pitching through the wood on the staircase.
Cherubic angels prayed that they should rest in peace, and Ondine found herself fervently desiring that they did, then wondering where the lord’s mistress might have been interred.
“Certainly not in the family vault!” she mused with a touch of amusement curling her lip.
Farther along she came upon the altar dedicated to the first of the Chathams—the Norman who had earned them the rumor of being “beasts.” The simple stone was so worn that little could be read of the inscription.
“Ah, but your legend, sir, lives on, long and well!” Ondine murmured. Then she touched the stone, a little tenderly, for despite all, she was in love with that long-ago lord’s descendant.
“Except that he is a beast, and it seems I must soon escape him and his madness, else become prey!” Squaring her shoulders as if she might shed her whimsical words of nonsense from them, she returned to the center aisle to reach the main altar.
Then she found herself wondering where Genevieve had been interred.
She stopped to turn about, and realized that the altar dedicated to Genevieve stood opposite that of the last Earl and Countess of North Lambria.
She gave pause, curious, for she was not easily frightened, yet she suddenly felt a tension and a chill.
Walk to the tomb, see it! she commanded herself, and she could not do so.
She gave herself a furious shake and continued to the main altar, where she dropped briefly to her knees, then stood to set the flowers in the urns there.
She was thus engaged when she heard what first seemed to be a moan. Hands upon a rose, she stiffened, still and silent.
And then the sound came again, like the wind, a whisper, a moan. She spun about, seeking out the corners of the room. But it had grown darker still, and all that flickered about her was blue and red light, a haze of it at that, a swirl of mystery.
“Who is there!” she called out, keeping her voice low and annoyed. Never show fear, her father had warned her once, for it is a weakness one’s enemies might feed upon.
There was no answer. She wondered if the air of the place might have played upon her mind, if all the superstitions did not haunt her good sense, and so she turned to her task again.
But the next sound was a husky whisper of her name, a sound with neither sex nor substance, but so clear that she pricked her finger upon a thorn on a rose and shuddered where she stood.
Now she swung in the greatest anger, ready to find her tormentor, determined to challenge him. Yet when she turned now, she was so startled that only a gasp came from her.
There was no need to search out her tormentor.
Not ten feet away stood . . . a creature. It was a mirage, an image surely created by the surreal light, by the pall of darkness and shadow, by the fears that lurked in her mind.
It was a creature, completely cloaked in black, its face a demon’s mask cast in a hideous leering grin.
And even as she stood, stunned and incredulous and gaping, the demon raised its arms to display hands that boasted talons, long and lethal, curled and poised as if they longed to strike, to come across throat and vein and render death with a single swipe.
Somewhere in her heart she knew no demon stood before her; no beast dragged from the bowels of this place of death. It did not matter; be it man or beast, the creature that faced her intended her harm, and she knew she must escape it.