Page 62 of Ondine

“Ondine, I have felt the majority of my life that a good switching would have done you incalculable good. You are a fool. If you lived, you should have preserved your life. You were a fool to come back here. You may talk yourself blue, you little bitch, but you’ll not change what appearances are.

Your father died in his pathetic attempt to kill the king.

We, your family, live out of favor because of it.

The king is aware that I have documentation that proves your complicity.

He knows, too, that doting uncle as I am, I am loathe to bring this forward.

Charles has a softness for women, Ondine.

Especially young, beautiful ones—led to wayward actions by their misguided elders. ”

He paused for a moment, calm now, pouring more port and lifting his glass to clink against hers.

“You had your chance, Ondine. Marriage to Raoul. This house united. But you spurned my son. It will cost you your life. You know that I cannot let you live.”

Her heart was thudding madly. She smiled and drained her port, hoping the fiery liquid would give her courage.

“Will you slay me, here, then, in your study? I think that the servants would definitely talk!”

She smiled vaguely and walked past him, idly thumbing the accounts that lay on the desk. Then she swirled around to him again. “I remind you, Uncle, that while I do live, I am the Duchess of Rochester.”

“But I am your legal guardian, until your twenty-first birthday. Two more years, Ondine. Are you so anxious, then, for the Tower and the headsman’s ax?”

She came around, seating herself at the desk, changing their position, and smiling most sweetly.

“Nay, Uncle, I am not eager for death. And that is why I have returned.”

He went still for a moment, then came to the desk, planting his hands upon it while he leaned close to her, watching her for some trickery.

“You mean to marry Raoul?” he demanded thickly.

“That was the arrangement you proposed all along, was it not? If I marry Raoul, this ‘proof’ you propose to present to the king will disappear. That is correct, is it not?”

There was a sharp rap at the door before he could answer her. “Who is it!” William thundered out impatiently.

“Raoul.”

William emitted some sound and came to the door, ushering his son inside, then quickly closing the door behind him. Raoul did not even glance at his father, but strode to the desk, staring at Ondine.

He was very much like his father: tall and slim, dark haired and complected, mahogany eyed.

He might have been a very handsome man, were it not for the sly cast to his features, a look of cruelty not unlike William’s, and understandably so, for it was the father who had bred avarice into the son.

He had been using the family fortune well, Ondine observed, for his pants were of the softest fawn, his shirt was thickly laced at collar and sleeves, and his surcoat was of the richest brocade.

He stared at her as the others had done; disbelieving her presence, amazed to see her so.

He reached out to touch her hair, a free cascade that fell down the velvet softness of her gown in a crescendo of sun and fire, and the expression in his eyes changed completely, frighteningly so, for she saw in it a lust that made her blood run cold.

She almost cried out at his lightest touch, one that merely assured him she was real and no mirage.

“You are back!” he said.

She was glad that the desk separated them. Once he had been her friend, a surly one at times, but a companion of youth. She had not known until that terrible day at court that he had meant to possess her and all that was hers at any cost.

“Aye, she’s back,” William said crossly from behind him.

“And showing no signs of wear!” William had lost his sense of amazement at her appearance and felt no qualms about accosting her.

He strode around the desk, catching her chin in his hand, twisting her face to his none too gently, and staring deeply into her eyes.

“You come in even richer apparel, my dear, than that in which you left us. I repeat, where have you been?”

“Uncle,” she said softly, with all the regal dignity she could muster when she chose, “do not touch me. I have come to deal, and that you should keep your bloodstained hands from me is my first demand.”

He laughed, shortly, with little humor, but he released her, seeming oddly disconcerted despite his bluster. “Girl, to live you will marry Raoul, and I assure you, as his wife, you’ll give yourself no airs!”

She lowered her eyes, wishing she might tell him she would be instantly and violently ill if it ever came to the point that she should share a bed with Raoul. Always, always, she would see her father’s blood upon both their hands!

But that was not something she could say now. She kept her eyes lowered then, afraid that she would give herself away.

“Uncle, I am not yet his wife. And when I am—” She shuddered inwardly. Oh, she despised them both! But she must carefully play this game. “It will be his touch, and his alone, that I endure. Until that moment, I demand that I be left in peace!”

“You demand—!” Raoul snapped in a whirl of fury, but his father pushed past him, planting his hands upon the desk once again.

“You demand, Ondine?” he asked softly. “You have no demands! You have come here—given yourself into my hands! It is at my whim whether you live or die, and you still think to speak to me as some crystal-pure princess! I will make the demands, Ondine, and you will jump to the tune of my voice.”

She leaned back sedately in the chair, eyeing them both most serenely, though her heart continued to plague her with its erratic beat. “Raoul!” she said softly. “We are not, as yet, wed. And until we are, I do have demands!”

He did not touch her, but he came so close that he well might have done so, and it was all that she could do not to shrink away in fear, for he bore no resemblance than whatsoever to the childhood companion she had once known.

She wondered at the things she saw in his dark eyes, rage, frustration, greed—and even a certain pain, something that might have been coupled with loss.

She wondered, too, if at some time he might have really cared for her, and if that caring had twisted to something more deadly.

“Cousin, I see your feelings for me, yet I care not what they are. Scream if you will when I touch you, still I will do so. Most pleasantly, my dear love, God has made it that you maintain your beauty, despite your mouth. It will give me the greatest pleasure in the world to mold you into a good wife—to break you, Ondine. And don’t delude yourself, sweet innocent.

’Tis more than possible that I can also turn you into the most ardent of lovers.

I want you, Ondine. Let it suffice at that.

I want you, and I want the land. That last I shall have one way or another.

The other, well, it is by your choice. My kiss, or that of the ax. ”

She pushed the chair away, rising as calmly as she could to escape them both. She tried to keep her fingers from shaking as she poured herself another badly needed drink.

“It is not completely my choice,” she said, her back to them both. “We must see if an agreement can be reached.”

“Agreement!” William thundered, coming to a red-faced rage again. “I remind you: I hold the cards—”

“Let’s hear her out, Father,” Raoul said smoothly with a tinge of humor to his voice. “Don’t you wish your victory complete? None could wrest the title or the land from us—ever!—if she were to be my wife!”

So! Ondine thought, quickly lowering her eyes. They were afraid! There were cracks in this ploy of theirs, and it seemed that even her uncle would rather have her alive than dead. It was true, a marriage would secure the claim.

“Duchess!” Raoul sneered nastily, bowing to her. “Let us hear your demands.”

She spun around, uplifted by the port—and the added faith that she could play for time.

“One month.”

“One month?” William queried warily.

“One month. I will marry Raoul one month from today. In that time he will not touch me; nor shall you. I will live here again as is my right and—accustom myself to the future.”

“And why,” William asked, “should I give you any time at all?”

“Because, if you do not, I will scream ‘traitor’ all the way down the aisle. I will tell the servants, I will shout to anyone that I see, that you were the ones to attempt to kill the king. I might well reach the Tower, but it will not be silently, I do assure you! The servants here, they loved my father well. Give them but a chance, and they will all be surly and suspicious. Give me the time I ask, and I will keep silent, and perhaps”—she sighed, then cast Raoul a hesitant smile—“perhaps we might consider it a normal betrothal time, in which two people come to know one another before their nuptials.”

Ah, how quickly Raoul took the bait! She might almost have pitied him for the hope that leapt into his eyes, except that it was true, she would never forget the blood that stained his hands.

“A month, then,” he said huskily, stepping forward.

But his father waylaid him, pointing a finger upon Ondine’s breast, despite her demand that she not be touched.

“Not so fast, Raoul! You all but drool, yet you do not know the facts. I want to know. Ondine, where you have been all this time!”

She sighed once again, very wearily. “I told you, Uncle, many places. I hid with thieves in the forest for a while. I—I found work in one of the north country manors—”

“You did not purchase this clothing through honest labor, Ondine. I’ll know where it came from and now.”

“I did purchase it, in London.”

“Where did the coin come from, girl?”

He kept pointing at her, and she found that she backed away from him, despite all resolve, until she sat upon the window seat with him staring down at her.