“Gregory,” Arabella turned her head away from the prodigious affection. “You must stop.”
“Why?” A deep rumbling chuckle shook her bodily when she yelped from the sharp pinch of teeth on her lower lip. The flat of his tongue came to lap at the wound before he stole another kiss.
“As you said… it is growing dark.”
Rubbing against her wantonly, Gregory teased. “You are only saying so because you think I will let you go. Perhaps if you had kissed me, I would have.”
When he descended again, ready to capture the lovely swollen mouth of his prize, Arabella pressed her fingers to his lips and whispered, “Please.”
Staring as if he might find the secrets of the universe in her naked expression, Gregory growled. “Come, White Woman. You have had your kiss, you are no longer hissing, and now I must put you away before you frighten the local farmers with your wanderings or snatch children in the night.”
Chapter 8
W armed in the kitchen, Payne saw that his Arabella sat at the table, deep in thought as she mindlessly ate. She had been distant, troubled since riding through the gate.
Payne had come to her, calm as still water. Payne had stood at the door to welcome her, watching Gregory Harrow ride off into the night. And Payne had held up a lamp by which Arabella might find her way through the yard.
And now he sat at her side, quiet and content so she might be those things too.
Magdala broke through the silence. “The harvest market begins in three days’ time, Lady Iliffe.”
“Yes, I know,” Arabella answered. “The Jenkins invited me this morning. I declined.”
“You must attend. Many things must be bought.” The housekeeper had groused for years at their mistress’s eccentric ways. Now that she had begun to shape Arabella into the form of a lady, the Spaniard was even more determined in the pursuit. “...and you must be seen.”
Arabella took a long pull of wine and acquiesced. “I will parade around and sneer properly.”
It was so unlike her, but Payne was proud to see her trying to live as she should.
Magdala too was pleased with the response. “As Payne must attend you, Hugh will assist me. The question of Mary…”
Arabella understood. She glanced at the unblinking maid and offered a true smile. “I would be honored to have Mary’s company.” The boy at the table earned her attention next. “And, Hugh,” she winked. “When errands are finished, you must have fun, but try not to spend all your wages in one day.”
Excited at the prospect, the lad answered. “Ye-ee--ess, my Lady.”
Pushing her finished dinner to the side, Arabella said, “Go fetch your book and we will read.”
Hugh had his favorite already set aside in a nook near the kitchen’s hearth. This had been their ritual from the first week. A quiet lesson, from a woman who had not learned to read or write until Payne had painstakingly taught her, to a boy who picked up his letters far faster than she ever had.
“Luuh-luh-Lady Iliffe,” Hugh stammered, pointing down at a difficult word in the exercise book. “This wuuuord?”
“Ruination,” Arabella answered, forcing a smile for the boy as she brushed his hair back from his brow. “It means-”
“I know what it means.” He did not stutter once, Hugh bearing an expression that said he knew far more than that word’s simple meaning.
“And what about redemption, Hugh? Do you know what that means?”
The boy did not answer, but he snuggled closer to the coolness of her body, burrowing as near as he dared. Placing her cheek on his crown, Arabella’s finger skimmed the page to show him what to read next, waiting patiently for him to fight his tongue.
By the hearth, Payne sat puffing on a pipe stuffed with fine tobacco. Watching her with the boy, he could not help but notice how much she’d changed in three years. His Arabella was so altered, the fullness to her cheek finally having returned. There were no longer any marks or gashes, even her posture had become that of a person and less of the crouched monstrosity that had been pulled out of hell.
Every line of her face was imprinted inside him, every elusive strain of her voice.
And it was that voice he had first known her by—the choked desperate gasps of air that frightened him when a few stones fell from his cellar bedroom’s wall all those years ago. She did not speak, sucking in each inhalation through the bored hole between their cells. A horrible stink immediately came with her, the thick cloying scent of filth and death—the very smell that clung to the Dutch slave ships of his childhood. How quickly he had scampered back, the hugeness of his body recoiling as if he were still only a boy in fear of the whip. It was the whimpered sobs, the soul wrenching scrape of nails against rock as gaunt fingertips clawed at the little opening, clutching and pulling, and finding not one more stone would budge that moved him.
“You have light...” the monster croaked, disbelieving and desperate.
Afraid, he took her his tiny stump of burning candle, finding he could deny that voice nothing. As the glowing halo approached, the demon in the dark began to weep, those same frail fingertips reaching toward the flame.