Page 67 of Ondine

“You will let Berta tend to you to my pleasure?” he asked.

She nodded. Oh, hurry, say what you will! she thought frantically, for to her amazement she realized that his kiss had actually made her nauseated; she was truly about to be sick.

“Go on, then; I’ll send her to you now,” he said almost gently.

“No!” she gasped out, then pleaded of necessity, “Raoul, I wish to be alone now, please!”

He caught her to him, kissed her on the forehead again. “Ondine, Ondine . . . I only wish to cherish you, to worship the font of your body! It will be wretched only if you make it so! Go, then, sleep, and dream of me and our future.”

Dream! Oh, most unholy nightmare!

But she curved her lips with effort into a shy smile. He released her, and she fled hastily up the stairs to her own suite.

She knew he followed her departure with his eyes, but she could give no thought to him. Within her room she quickly bolted the door, glad of Berta because her room was warm and the fire blazed and offered her light.

As the bolt clicked she knew she had no more time. She brought her hand to her mouth and raced from the sitting room to the bedroom, and to her dresser. She barely managed to free the pitcher from the bowl before she was violently ill.

Spasms shook her again and again. She thought that she would die with the vileness of it, yet eternity though it seemed, the sickness at last came to an end, leaving her weak and gasping.

Fumbling, she found the water pitcher and splashed water over her face and throat and hands, using it all before she could feel clean.

She staggered then, out to the balcony, out to the bitter cold of night, for only there would she feel refreshed and breathe easily.

Bleakly she railed in silence against herself. How would she ever manage this, if she were to be so pathetically weak?

You have endured so much! she shrieked inwardly.

Near starvation in the forest; rotting in Newgate!

The feel of the hangman’s noose about her throat!

The drugs and evil designs of foul-smelling slavers, and the more pathetic danger of Mathilda’s twisted designs.

All this she had endured. She could not fail now!

Ah, but through the last travail, she had been Warwick’s countess; ever he had been there for her! There had been those magic moments when he had held her, when the sweeping force of his possession had taken her mind from all fear, from all thought, from all else but the ecstasy . . .

Ah, milady, he is gone now! she reminded herself. He cannot be a part of this!

But such reminders could not ease the tumult of her thoughts. She stiffened her shoulders and realized she grew frigidly cold, yet that cold felt good. She forced herself to think with sense and logic.

Her only chance lay in meekness, in convincing Raoul that she meant all that she said, in learning to speak gently to him. And William, too, needed to feel a confidence; if he did not, she would never have the opportunity to put him off guard.

“I will do it!” she whispered aloud to the moon, cast high over the snow. First she must harden her heart—and her stomach. She dared not let Raoul know yet that his touch made her violently ill.

And as to Warwick . . .

“Oh, damn him, too!” she muttered fiercely. But with that, she felt strong again. She returned inside and held her breath and cleaned up all the messes she had made, using snow from the balcony to freshen her bowl. Then she drew a chair to the fire and waited.

Hours slipped by. She donned her heaviest nightdress, one of thick material, and quietly let herself out her bedroom door.

All was silent.

She tread softly down the stairs, and silently into her uncle’s office. A moon gleamed richly beyond the walls of Deauveau Place, but she could have wept, for it did not give her enough light.

She hesitated, then brought a long tinder match to the small lamp on the desk. The glow filled the room, and she hurriedly began her quest through the drawers. She had to find his forgeries and destroy them. That wouldn’t clear her father, but it would end his threats to have her sent to the Tower!

Time swept by as she desperately and methodically stuck to her task, drawer after drawer. But she could find nothing amiss. There were quills and ink and blotters, accounts and ledgers, wages paid and monies earned from the tenants.

She thought most acidly that William Deauveau was a splendid foreman—he collected every last shilling due!

As she opened the last drawer she felt depression overwhelm her. There was nothing here! Ah, she had known it, hadn’t she? That this was far too obvious a place—

She froze then, aware that a footstep had landed on the stair. There was a pause and then another fell, and she realized that someone was trying to stalk her.

Thinking quickly, she grabbed a book from the shelves, collected the lamp, and hurried to the window seat, curling into it with the book in her hand, the lamp at her side.

The doors swung suddenly and violently open. She uttered a little scream, grabbing the book to her chest.

William Deaveau stood there in nightdress and cap, staring at her with the greatest suspicion.

“Oh, Uncle!” she gasped. “You frightened me sorely!”

He stepped into the room, grimly silent, looking about. She was eternally grateful that she had replaced things as neatly as she had found them.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded harshly.

She tried to gaze into his eyes with a look of pure innocence. “I could not sleep; I thought that I might read.”

He strode over to her, staring at her more closely. He snatched the book from her hold, sneering at her.

“Do you often read with your story upside down, Ondine?”

“What? Oh, I dropped the book when you slammed the door so!” she accused him in hurt return.

He kept smiling, slipping the book behind his back. “And what were you reading, my dear?”

She might have screamed inside; she could not. She dredged from her subconscious mind all that her conscious thoughts had hidden. It had been a dusty green bound book, one with beautifully gilded pages.

“Shakespeare!” she gasped out.

She had guessed right; his eyes registered his surprise.

“And what collection?”

She searched her memory, yet already breathed more easily. “ King Lear is the first play in that particular work, Uncle,” she told him serenely.

He opened the book, gazed at the first page, then snapped it shut and handed it back to her. “It’s very late; you might tire of a sudden and sleep with the lamp askew, thus starting a blaze that might well kill us all. Go to bed.”

Ondine had no thought whatsoever to argue. She clutched the book to her breast and ran quickly up the stairs. Safe in her room with the door bolted once again, she sank to the floor, trembling.

She must learn to be cautious—so, so cautious!

In time her heart slowed its frantic pace. She rose and went on into her bedroom, then into her bed, praying that she could find some release in sleep. But sleep, when it came, gave her nothing. The images that plagued her were not nightmares of Raoul, but haunting memories of Warwick.

Ah, memories that made her wake wretchedly exhausted!

“Autocratic bastard! Must you linger with me, command even my sleep now! Ah, that I could only flaunt the true fact of birth to your noble face!”

She whispered out the words, then turned into her pillow, groaning. She clutched her temples, made painfully aware that last night’s illness had followed her to morning.

She felt horrible, even lying down. Queasy, dizzy . . .

“Oh, God!”

All color fled from her face; she was eternally grateful that she was alone, that Berta had not come to serve her yet.

Her mind went horribly blank, then filled with dates and times and figures; detail upon detail of intimate times together went flashing through her thoughts.

“Oh, God!” she repeated.

And she knew that Raoul—totally loathsome creature that he was!—had not caused her illness, nor had exhaustion, excitement, nervousness, nor any other easily dismissed disorder.

She was carrying Warwick Chatham’s child—not in pretense, but in devastating fact.