Page 80 of The Phantom Duke
“Clearly.”
“You do not have to sound so smug about it.”
Simon raised his glass in a mocking toast. “To the happy couple,” he said, not unkindly. “My friend, I am happy for you. If you perceive any smugness on my part, it is only my pleasure at your agreement.”
“I see.”
Damien slumped in his seat, suddenly exhausted. He did care for Maria. He would not deny that, but admitting it seemed somehow more frightening than anything else in his life.
Shortly after Simon’s departure, Damien heard the return of the carriage. He looked back towards the house from the shade of the trees. To one side, he could see the arrangement of brick outbuildings that were the stables. He watched Maria alight from the carriage and walk towards the house. He leaned on a silver birch, one hand on the flaking, pale bark, feeling the vibrant life beneath.
She moves with the grace of a bird. As though trained to do it. The fashions of our time hide her body from me, but I can imagine her long, lean limbs.
These thoughts were proving difficult to deter. Since breakfast with his wife, he had been increasingly distracted by thoughts of her. And by the revelations of the day before. How could it bethat sunlight no longer bothered him as it once had? Even Simon had seemed baffled by his seeming miraculous recovery.
Now, he could walk the lawns in the afternoon sun and not feel any discomfort. The sight of trees that had previously been known to him as shadows, shades of darkness, were now energetically alive. The woods were bursting with color, a vibrancy he drank down like a man who had just crawled out of the desert toward a drop of water.
As Maria reached the door of the house, she stopped. It was so sudden that the servant who followed her almost walked into her. She had not been hailed by anyone; no one had called her name. Something had stopped her in her tracks, though.
Her head came up, hair falling to her shoulders in a shimmering cloud. How he remembered the smell of that hair, the feel of its softness as it ran through his fingers. His breath caught in his throat, his pulse jumping at how beautiful she was.
Better if I disappear into the woods for a time. Follow the safe paths deep into the grounds and remain alone and inviolate. Strong.
But he could not move. Would not move. Maria’s head turned, and Damien saw the movement as though time had slowed, as though she moved through air that had turned to honey. Her eyes swept the lawn and came to rest on him.
How had she seen him from that distance? How had she known he was there? Damien stared at her, feeling the delicatetouch of her eyes even over the distance of the lawn that stretched between them. She was coming towards him, moving uncertainly at first but then with purpose, as though an inner dilemma had been resolved.
“I think you have the powers of the fey,” Damien said as Maria stood before him. “I do not understand otherwise how you could have known that I was here.”
Her response was to smile. “If you are accusing me of witchcraft, then I accept. I have always thought that the life of a hedge witch, preparing potions and herbal remedies for the sick, would be a pleasant life.”
“A witch with a Phantom for a husband?” Damien asked.
She was dressed for society. Her gown matched the sky. It left her arms bare, revealing perfect, feminine flesh, soft and pliant. The faint sweetness of orange blossoms and lavender filled his nostrils and set his blood roaring in his ears. He felt an almost overwhelming urge to stroke, to touch and to kiss her. The rebellion within himself at such feelings, the protest that this was the path to attachment—to weakness and vulnerability—was loud, but he ignored it.
His desire for Maria was greater than his fear. It had been growing in him since their last intimate encounter. The fuel was the sight of her in the gardens, laughing with her friends, free and without concern. At breakfast, alone with him, except for the presence of servants. Those servants were the same as chains around Damien, holding him back from the object of his desire.
How long will I consider it necessary to hold myself back? How long before I admit to myself that I have been wrong? I am too stubborn by half. Blast it! Simon was right.
“A witch with a man for a husband,” Maria said. “How unconventional.”
“I will duel any man who dares to call you a witch.”
Maria laughed, light and airy. “You do not need to. I would not take it as an insult, and perhaps one day I will be a wizened crone to fit the image perfectly.”
“You will only be a crone in the eyes of others,” Damien said.
Maria glowed at the compliment. But there was something behind her eyes as she stepped into the shade of the birch; it was like the shadow of a rain cloud darkening the lucid mirror of a calm lake. Damien frowned.
“Something is wrong. Where were you today?”
“I took tea at the White Conduit Tea rooms with Lady Evelina of Thornwall,” Maria said, quickly.
He recognized the name as belonging to one of her friends, but he could not remember which lady the name belonged to. “Indeed? A great source of anxiety, I can tell,” Damien said dryly.
“Can we walk for a while?” Maria said, looking behind Damien into the cool shadows of the wood. “You know of a safe route through?”
“I do, or I would be a prisoner behind my own walls,” Damien said.
