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Chapter Eight
She sleeps uneasily.Dorian watched their unexpected stowaway under the guise of being asleep himself, for he did not want to invite another teasing from Hudson. Though he need not have worried: Hudson’s snores rattled through the shadowed carriage like musket fire.
Constellations of the flesh.He had not been able to get the utterance out of his head since she had spoken it. He had touched that cosmos with the pad of his thumb, and it had stirred something terrifying in him: a faint attachment to the girl.
He thought of his mother and father, now gone from this world, and the infant sister whom he had never met. He had been upon a battlefield when she was born, unexpectedly, in the withered winter of his mother’s fertility. Sickly from birth, she had lived for barely six months before the Reaper took her. His mother had never recovered from the complications of the birth nor the ensuing death, and though she had held on a few months longer, she passed regardless.
His father, grief-stricken at the loss of his wife and infant daughter, and harrowed by the change in his son when he came back on temporary leave to attend his mother’s funeral, had not lived through another full turn of the Earth. He had not even waited until Dorian’s campaign abroad was done. That was how Dorian came to be the Earl of Langston, relying solely upon his dear friend to stave off the loneliness that would otherwise have consumed him.
“Hmm?” Rose roused unexpectedly, her hazel eyes blinking open. “Did you say something, My Lord? I must have dozed off.” He could smell the warmth of slumber on her as she wriggled free of the shawl she had wrapped about herself, like a blanket. A soothing scent of childhood memory, when he had cuddled into his mother, and she had attempted not to flinch at his affections.
For who could love a demon child with eyes like mine?He had never blamed his mother and father for their wariness of him, for they were people of superstition, as most godly folks were wont to be. Still, it had stung his boyhood self when they had shunned him, or stared in secret, or gathered priests and vicars to try and chase away the supposed wickedness that had made his eyes the way they were.
“I said nothing,” he replied, drawing his eyes away from the gaping tear in the bodice of her dress and the way his tailcoat lay over her shoulders, the lapels running over the rise of her bosom. A more private caress than his thumb to her cheek, or his fingertips against her neck. “Return to your rest.”
Am I so without self-control that I would envy the fabric of my own tailcoat?He scorned himself for the idiocy of the thought. He did not need the attention of the fairer sex, nor did they need his attention. It was safer for all involved if he never delved into that world of willowy limbs and tender, intoxicating flesh again.
As he battled within his mind, Rose was clearly oblivious to the conflict. She nodded and folded herself back into the security of her shawl. As she rested her head against the carriage wall, all of the stress and strain seemed to slough away from her pretty features. In the land of sleep, he did not know if nightmares pursued her, as they did with him.
“You are safe now,” he whispered a few minutes later, believing her to be asleep. “No-one will harm you again. No-one will touch you.”
One hazel eye peeled open. “Pardon, My Lord?”
“I did not speak,” he lied, all of the breath rushing out of him in panic. Had she heard him say those things? He did not know what had come over him. Perhaps, she was the one with an unnatural spirit within her, who could bewitch even the most impervious of men.
“My mistake.” She closed her eye, apparently satisfied, but Dorian did not dare to whisper words of comfort again. Indeed, he did not know where such sentiments had come from.
It is the brandy,he told himself.It must be the brandy. When I awaken in the morning, rested and well, I will feel like myself again.
And yet, as the carriage trundled on toward his country estate, he found he could not take his eyes off her, not even for a moment.
* * *
The carriage crunched up the driveway to Langston House to the hoot of a watchful owl, and the coo of restless doves in the silver birches that lined the approach on either side. A gibbous moon glowed the creamy yellow of churned butter, shedding its inviting light upon the estate and its expansive grounds.
In the nearby woods that encircled the manor house, a stag lifted its head at the sound of the carriage wheels, its ears flicking back and forth in agitated curiosity.
There you are again…Dorian spotted the creature between the trunks of oaks and horse chestnuts, chilled by the eerie white of the beast’s fur. It had long been a legend that a white stag resided on the grounds of the Langston Estate, the creature as old as England itself, if the storytellers in the local village were to be believed. His father had professed to have seen the beast only thrice: once on the eve of his wedding day, and the other two times shortly before discovering that his wife was with-child, with Dorian and with ill-fated Annabelle.
As such, no-one could be sure if the stag was a good or bad omen. Dorian had never seen it with his own eyes until a few months ago. Since then, he had witnessed it almost weekly, emerging like a phantom from the woodland.
“Are we here, My Lord?” Rose stirred again, her eyes bleary with rest.
He turned to her and nodded. “We are.”
By the time he had turned back, the stag had gone, melting into the shadows of the trees.
The young woman bristled with excitement, eagerly peering out of the carriage window. “Goodness, it is… vast! I hadn’t expected it to be so large. You could fit three, perhaps four, Mayfair townhouses side by side, and there would still be some room.”
“There is space for it here. To have a home like this in London would be obnoxious at best, greedy at worst.” Dorian resisted the impulse to smile at her exuberance. Evidently, she had never been beyond the city before.
“There are so many trees!” she gushed, undeterred. “Why, it must be larger than Hyde Park. I have been there only a handful of times, but I don’t remember it being nearly as enormous as this.”
“Not quite so large,” Dorian replied.
Hudson awoke with a stretch and a groan. “Let it be known that there is wizardry in sleep. One moment, I may be in London. The next, I am home.” He sighed contentedly. “And, oh, the glorious dreams that this night has given me. Rebecca… I shall remember our discourse fondly.”
“No-one needs to hear of your exploits, in your dreams or otherwise,” Dorian reprimanded with a note of humor in his voice. He knew what his friend meant by “discourse,” and it had little to do with talking.
