My Sweet Folly Read online

  SEVEN

  Dear Mr. Cambourne,

  We must take our leave of you. Hereafter, it will be convenient to maintain our necessary correspondence through Mssrs. Hawkridge and James.

  With respect,

  Folie Hamilton

  Lander was laughing, Robert thought, though the man’s face was austere. God knew, he would have laughed at himself; such an impotent fool he must appear. Robert crushed the note and tossed it into the fireplace under Phillippa’s looming portrait. “Where are they?”

  “Lady Dingley has invited Mrs. Hamilton and her stepdaughter to stay at Dingley Court.”

  “You took them there.”

  Lander did not reply.

  “Damn your insolence,” Robert muttered. He stared at the portrait. “I suppose...” He stopped, and then said with a bitter chuckle, “She is greatly relieved, doubtless. To escape my evil snare.”

  “She said no such thing, sir.”

  Robert gave him a satirical look. “She was in love with me once. Can you imagine that?” He lifted his face toward the ceiling. “Oh, God. Are you poisoning me, Lander?” He laughed, shaking his head. “Come, tell me that you are, and this is not really madness.”

  Alarm rose in him as he spoke, for the peril of saying such words. He turned quickly toward his butler. “I jest, of course!” Robert said. “Indian humor.”

  Lander’s gravity changed to attention. “Poison, sir?” he asked, without shock or bewilderment. “You hired me for your safekeeping, Mr. Cambourne. If you have some suspicion of poison, I hope you will speak plainly of it.”

  Robert tightened his jaw. He focused fiercely on the gilded frame, avoided Phillippa’s face looking gaily down on him. He did not trust Lander. He could not bring himself to trust the man.

  “I beg your pardon, sir.” The faintest trace of impatience touched Lander’s words. “How am I to provide the guard you desired if you will not confide in me?”

  “Guard!” Robert snapped. “After I ordered you to prevent their leaving the grounds, you kindly provide a personal escort as they go!”

  “Dismiss me for it if you will, sir,” Lander said grimly. “I’ll provide you with all the protections I am capable of rendering, as you engaged me to do, but I cannot participate in incarcerating ladies here against their will.”

  “Fine words! And if you have put them into danger?”

  “What danger?” Lander’s voice rose. “Tell me what danger!”

  The edge in his voice matched Robert’s, hardly the tone of a servant to his master. Robert turned sharply, staring at him.

  “Begging your pardon, sir.” Lander lowered his eyes, but there was still a doggedness about the set of his shoulders.

  “I suppose if I hire a thief-taker out of Bow Street for a butler, I should not be astonished at his cheek,” Robert said.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” Lander repeated.

  “I don’t know precisely what danger. I have told you all that I know.”

  Lander gave him a clear-eyed look. “If you will give me leave to speak.”

  Robert let go of a harsh breath and waved his hand. “Speak.”

  “If you suspect poison in the house, even the slightest chance—surely the ladies are not safe here.”

  Robert smiled sardonically. “And less so if it is not poison, eh? If I am only a—” His throat closed on the word madman. He did not say it, but it hung in the air.

  Lander did not appear to hear the unspoken implication. In a quiet voice he said, “Those of the staff that I installed here I trust, but I cannot say with certainty that the others are beyond doubt. The cook and the charwomen are mine, though, and I see to it that I bring your meals myself.” He frowned. “You eat and drink next to nothing. With respect, sir—you will kill your own self that way, poison or no.” He paused, and then said, “If you have moments of—of confusion in your thoughts...” He did not meet Robert’s eyes. “ ‘Haps it is from starving yourself, sir. Begging your pardon.”

  Aye, Robert thought, and if ‘tis you who taint my food, would you not want to convince me to eat what you bring?

  “What do you suggest?” he asked coolly.

  “If you do not trust me, sir,” Lander said, “and I see clear enough that you don’t, then go into the village and eat there. Buy a loaf, eat at the cookshop. Go alone, at some odd time, so that neither I nor another can touch what you swallow.”

  “You don’t understand,” Robert said.

  “No sir,” Lander said. “I don’t, for I don’t take you for a fool. I’m sure you have thought of this.”

  “I cannot go out there.” Robert turned away from him. “I cannot go out.”

  “But who do you fear? What is it?”

  “Out there,” he shouted. He could not turn around to face the butler’s silence. He gripped the bedpost, staring at the game of chess that he played endlessly against himself on a bedroom table; black queen and white knights that never won and never lost.

  “The outside?” Lander asked slowly. “You are afraid to go outside?”

  His clear bewilderment touched Robert at the core. Suddenly, wildly, the shame rose up in him to such a pitch that he could not contain it. He felt himself move; he felt as if his whole body was afire and acting beyond his own will. He seized the chessboard; flung it down. Carved pieces flew across the floor. The black queen smashed against a foot of the bed, bursting into two fragments.

  Her headless torso came to rest at his boot. Robert reached down and picked up the broken chess piece. He closed his fingers, crushing the black queen in his hand.

  “I am not afraid,” he said coldly and deliberately. He looked up at Lander. “Ready a horse.”

  Lander did not obey. “You intend to go after them?’’ he asked in a strange, half-angry tone.

  “What is it to you?” Robert snarled. “Get me a mount!”

  Lander hesitated, standing between Robert and the door, his jaw working as if he would speak.

  Robert’s hands shook. He felt the sudden red tide of passion receding, leaving him stranded, imprisoned under Phillippa’s portrait.

  You won’t go, her voice taunted. Little man. You’re too frightened to go.

  The chess pieces lay scattered across the floor. Robert ran his thumb across the sharp edge of the headless queen in his hand.

  He moved, forcing Lander out of his path, striding furiously free into the void that awaited him.

  After an awkwardly polite nuncheon with Lady Dingley and her oldest daughters, Sir Howard excused himself to estate business. A maid led Folie and Melinda up to the guest room. The chamber Lady Dingley had prepared for them held the musty, venerable scent of last having been used to accommodate some Royalist cavalier on the business of Charles the First. What weak sunlight that leaked through the leaded glass was soaked up by oak paneling that was shiny and almost black with age; Folie needed a candle just to brush out Melinda’s hair. The centerpiece, a monster of a bed with fat, carved posts and faded red and gold damask hangings, appeared to have bowed down the very floorplanks beneath it with ancient dignity.

  Without Sally and their own dressing boxes, it was impossible for Folie to set Melinda or herself completely to rights. “Go and make yourself comfortable with the girls,” Folie told her, tying her stepdaughter’s bonnet in place as well as she might. “I shall go back down to Lady Dingley in a few moments.”

  Melinda flitted away, already buoyant with new friends, the strained smile of Solinger vanished from her expression. But Folie lingered in the guest chamber, nervously smoothing down the fresh linen cloth that the chambermaid had lain across a heavy chest. She wandered the room, looking up at a pair of portraits painted onto panels over the hearth, some bygone master and mistress of Dingley, their faces almost obscured by the film of age. Folie tilted her head, trying to see some likeness to Sir Howard in the gentleman with the pointed beard and wide ruff. She could see none: Sir Howard was too uncompromisingly robust and plain-speaking to have anything in common with
his lace-embellished and pearl-bedecked ancestor. It was the lady of the pair who appeared to bear the most resemblance to the present daughters of the house—even beneath the dim gauze of centuries, her square, honest face and searching eyes seemed familiar, looking out with the same frank curiosity that had met Folie and Melinda at the carriage door.

  Folie gave the portrait a little fidgety curtsy. “We are much obliged to you for the hospitality,” she murmured. Then she turned away, squeezing her hands together, her heart having a troublesome tendency to stick in her throat. “Oh, you silly noodle—Folie, Folie—why did you ever let us leave Toot?’’

  Here they were, without money, without belongings, among strangers they had no claim upon—what if the servants returned with nothing? What if he would not give up their possessions, what if he kept her purse? He had threatened as much—why should she expect that servants could wrest from him what he meant to have? All of Melinda’s wardrobe and enough of Folie’s savings to crush any hopes of even a few weeks in London, left there in her room at Solinger.

  She sat down in a massive rocking chair, pushing hard with her feet to move it to and fro. The floor creaked. The ebony wood was slick beneath her damp palms, but she needed the motion and the noise to soothe her. A few more minutes to calm herself, before she went down and faced Lady Dingley again, before she had to conceal her fears and agitations. She had eaten little of the bread and cheese and gingerbread served at nuncheon, and now as the time approached that news could arrive from Solinger, her stomach felt empty and ill with dread.

  She stopped rocking, her body paralyzed, when she heard a scratch at the door. “Come,” she said faintly.

  A maid opened the door halfway. “Mr. Cambourne calls, ma’am,” she said calmly. “He requests the honor of your attendance.”

  “What?” Folie sat up straight.

  The maid dropped a curtsy. “Will you honor Mr. Cambourne?” she repeated mildly.

  “Mr. Cambourne?” She could hardly squeak the name. “Mr. Cambourne from Solinger?”

  The maid nodded, with a little lift of her brows, as if it was a delicious tidbit. “Yes, ma’am!”

  Folie shook her head vigorously. “No, I—I am indisposed. I really cannot—” She began rocking powerfully. “If Lady Dingley will make my excuses,” she said faintly over the squeak.

  The maid looked doubtful. “M’lady said she was certain you would wish to speak to him.”

  “I cannot.” Folie shook her head again. Really, she felt quite ill. “I must lie down.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The chambermaid withdrew with another curtsy. Folie heard the door latch click. She had a demented idea of locking it, but a quick search of the drawers and tabletops revealed no key.

  She went to the window, leaning on the cushion that padded the deep stone seat. She looked out, hoping to see Sir Howard’s horse, but all she saw was a stableboy walking a lean chestnut that steamed lightly in the chill. She recognized the mount from daily tours through the half-empty Solinger stables; she and Melinda had fed it lumps of sugar, one of their few diversions there.

  She waited, her heart thumping, to see him leave the house in the wake of her refusal. She could not, would not speak to him—but she found that somehow she craved to see him one time...oh, one last time. Her throat ached with sudden longing, as if the days she had loved him in dreams had become reality again. As if, as if. It had always been “as if.” As if he were hers, as if he were there, as if falling in love was a tangible joy that could last longer than the flash of a salmon in a summer stream, longer than the wisp of breath from the chestnut’s muzzle; as if it could be more than this heart’s toll of yearning which was all that it had ever truly been.

  She bent her head, turning from the window. She must let it go, that dream. How long and hard she had tried to let it go—and in the end she was running away from him, hunted by this alien reality, this intruder on her fantasy, running and running and somehow longing not to go, somehow still hoping she would find that her dream was real.

  The door handle turned. Folie whirled at the sound. Lady Dingley stood in the doorway.

  “Ah, you are not in bed,” she said calmly. “Perhaps it will not tax you too much to see Mr. Cambourne? I’ve brought him up, since you are not well enough to come down.”

  There was a faint triumph in her mildness, but Folie hardly noticed it. She caught a glimpse of Robert Cambourne in the passageway, standing stiff and tall behind Lady Dingley. In a rush of mortification, Folie turned away.

  There was no escape. She heard him come in; heard the door close. But she could not look up at him; she simply could not.

  Silence stood between them. She took a step away from the window, turning her shoulder to him. The floorboards creaked; from the corner of her eye, she saw that he moved away from her, pointlessly, as if they were two magnets that repelled one another.

  “I wished to apologize,” he said in a low voice, though there was little hint of regret in his harsh tone. “I should not have attempted to keep you at Solinger against your will.”

  “No,” she said to her dirty slippers. “That was not well done of you.”

  Having nothing to do with her hands, she took up one of the paper candle screws left on the bedside table and turned the scrap tighter and tighter, torquing it about itself until it began to tear in the middle.

  “Will you stop Melinda’s allowance?” she asked abruptly, her voice as harsh as his.

  “No.”

  Folie took a deep breath. She laid the paper screw down and dared a glance at him, but he was not looking at her. With a tentative new courage, she studied him. If he felt any of the confusion or unease that Folie did, he showed nothing of it. He seemed remote, his black eyebrows lifted in that expression of elegant disdain—directed, as far as Folie could tell, at the fire irons. He stood very straight, like a man at a funeral. For an instant he looked up; his eyes grazed past her and settled resolutely on the wash-stand.

  Strangely, she began to feel herself somehow in command of the moment. It was as if now that he was here, he had lost whatever force had brought him. He seemed caught in a cold trance, unable to look at her, wordless.

  “Is that why you came after us?” she asked, moving to the window. She sank down upon the cushioned seat. “To apologize?”

  As if her action released him, he moved again, this time crossing to the bed. Abruptly he sat down upon it. Folie felt as if they were engaged in some peculiar dance, each step of hers matched by one of his, but none taking them anywhere. Still he did not look at her, but seemed intensely engaged in a study of a brass ewer on the chest.

  The faded light touched his face, lighting it with a particular softness. The set of his mouth and arch of his brows remained, and yet now what had been inflexible arrogance seemed almost wistful. Sitting on the bed, he did not appear so stiff; he looked down at his hands and shook his head.

  She waited. After a long moment, he made an unhappy laugh. “Folly.” He shook his head again. “My sweet Folly.”

  She closed her eyes. All the vivid years of his letters and his love seemed to accumulate at the base of her throat, caught hard there. She had never heard them spoken, those words. It sounded so different, so strange, so harsh and rueful; nothing of what she had dreamed.

  Suddenly, without any purpose to what she did, she rose and went to him. She sat down beside him on the bed. It felt like a clumsy move, a silly thing to do. But he shifted slightly to accommodate her, as if he had expected it. They sat side by side, not looking at one another. She looked down at his hands, saw the red cut, untended, from the smashed wineglass.

  “Oh, well, then,” Folie said, angrily. She sounded petulant, as if she had given in to some whim of Melinda’s. She touched his hand. She barely skimmed the back of his palm, her fingertips tracing the rough line of the cut. “Your poor hand,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  He turned his palm over and opened it. She look
ed down at the broken chess piece he held, a black queen with the head broken off. “What is this?” she murmured.

  “Nothing,” he said. He let it slip into her fingers.

  Folie held the damaged piece, feeling the warmth in it. She could feel his body’s warmth beside her. It was as close as she had ever been to him; she breathed the familiar scent of his letters, of him. She had no notion of what she was doing or what she wished to happen. But her heart was pounding.

  Robert, Robert, she thought. It seemed her mind would revolve on nothing else.

  He moved his hand from beneath hers. She thought he would stand up, but instead he brushed his fingers against her throat. Folie made a faint sound of protest, drawing back, but he slid his hand behind her neck, pulling her toward him. His other hand came up and cupped her cheek; he held her chin between strong fingers and kissed her.

  She had never been kissed on the mouth before. He tasted of ginger—or she did; she hardly knew. Her hands pushed against his shoulders, but he had a purpose in his movements now; he held her, exploring her mouth, his breath warming her lips, his fingers pressing into her jaw.

  She broke away, turning her face. “I’ve never done this!” she whispered in agitation.

  “Done what?” He ran his fingers gently over her cheek, across her mouth, his gaze following his touch.

  She moistened her lips, lowering her chin. “Kissed,” she said stupidly. She made a sound like a frantic half-laugh. “Not this way. I don’t know how!”

  “Yes, you do,” he murmured urgently, leaning to draw her back, kissing her again. “Yes, you do.”

  He touched her lower lip with his tongue, teased it, and then tasted her whole mouth. This is Robert, she thought in wonder—Robert kissing me, now, now, the first and last time. She could feel the heat in him catch her, like a fire igniting from a hidden coal beneath the ashes. The air she breathed was Robert. Her body flamed with shame and yearning, but she did not move. She could not, she should not; she did not wish to do this.