Falling Stars Read online

  That didn’t altogether explain why, as he eased his six-foot frame away from the doorway, he seemed to fill the room, or why her senses should bristle and quicken at his slightest motion.

  She felt his knowing green-gold eyes upon her, a swiftly assessing glance, come and gone in seconds. Yet her flesh prickled and heated under it, as though under his hands, and she felt she’d been unclothed... and teased ... and abandoned.

  She yanked her needle through the linen.

  He stopped a moment to look over Penny’s shoulder at the untidy heap of paper, and teased her about preparing for a party as Wellington might a war campaign. Penny laughed and made some joking answer.

  Then he moved toward Christina. She felt a frantic fluttering within, and a memory rose that sent a mortifying heat rushing up her neck.

  The day after she’d first spoken to him, Marcus had found her alone in this sitting room. She’d been daydreaming out a window.

  She’d heard him come up behind her, but hadn’t moved. She’d felt the same inner flutter then, and a confusing warmth, and the same mingled anxiety and anticipation. He’d stood behind her, not uttering a word. She’d held her breath, waiting, wondering what would happen next, all the while terrified someone would come—and hoping someone would. Then she’d felt his breath, a whisper against her neck that sent a warm tingle down her spine, all the way to her toes. “I just want to be near you,” he’d said, his voice so low it was a wonder she’d heard it past the frantic beating of her heart.

  Her idiotic heart was growing frantic now, as he paused mere inches from her chair. What she felt was a perfectly sensible anxiety, she told herself. If he was still annoyed about finding her here, he could make her stay uncomfortable. And she must stay. Her house let for the next twelvemonth, Great-Aunt Georgiana gone to Scotland, Christina was trapped at Greymarch until the New Year.

  At the moment she felt trapped in her chair by the tall masculine body looming over her.

  “I’ve come to ask if you’d paint with us, Mrs. Travers.”

  His rich baritone came from directly above her bowed head. She was staring at his gleaming boots, a hand’s breadth from her grey kid shoes. She didn’t want to look up until she had collected her rapidly disintegrating composure. He had already made her blush once, and she would rather hang than do it again—like the awkward schoolgirl she’d been all those years ago.

  “I beg your pardon?” There was an infuriatingly childish wobble in her voice. She stabbed her needle into the handkerchief.

  “We’ve decided to paint dragons. Delia and Livy said you’re an expert dragon painter.”

  “Oh. I... well, that is very kind, but...” Oh, wonderful—stammering, too, like a tongue-tied adolescent.

  “Also, Delia will not wear her smock, which Livy says she must do,” he went on. “Which places me in an awkward predicament.”

  Christina raised her head quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid the lean, muscled length of male between the boots and the glint of gold in his eyes. Was that amusement she saw—or mockery?

  “Good heavens, Marcus,” Penny exclaimed, “could you not leave it to a nursery maid?”

  “Not before I’d ascertained the facts,” he answered. “For all I knew, the child might have a terror of smocks. Children do take unaccountable aversions, I’m told. Since she’s been otherwise perfectly agreeable, I concluded I had stumbled upon a strongly-rooted aversion.”

  Christina found her voice. “It is an aversion,” she said. “But not to smocks in general—only Livy’s in particular, which are starched.”

  “There, I knew it must be significant,” Marcus triumphantly told his sister-in-law. He turned back to Christina. “Starch, is it? She only said it was horrid, and she wouldn’t wear it.”

  “Nor will she.” Christina rose. “I never thought to explain it to the maid. I’ll go find one of Delia’s smocks—unstarched—and—”

  “And one for yourself,” he prompted. “You don’t want to spoil your gown with dragon paint.”

  Yes, one for herself, of course. He’d come only because he wanted her to take the children off his hands. Firmly crushing a twinge of disappointment, she hurried out to find the dratted smocks.

  ***

  Marcus had meant to leave the children in Christina’s care, and get away where he could put his thoughts back into order—for the angelic-looking twins had disordered them to an alarming degree.

  He’d discovered that looking after little girls was nothing like minding rough-and-tumble little boys. Christina had called her daughters hoydens, but they seemed to Marcus the most fragile of china dolls. Out of doors, he found himself worrying that they weren’t dressed warmly enough, then that they were over warm, and would take a chill in consequence. Every game seemed too rough; all the places he’d taken for granted as perfectly safe for children abruptly became fraught with perils.

  Aware his anxieties were absurd, he’d refrained from acting upon them and, as one would expect, no tragedy had occurred, not even a scraped knee. He’d spent the whole time on the edge of panic, all the same.

  When they were safely indoors at last, he’d hardly begun to relax before Delia threw the fit about the smock, setting off all the ridiculous alarms again.

  He’d given up and gone for their mama—and stumbled into other, worse difficulties.

  He was thrown off-balance in the sitting room because Christina had blushed when he’d spoken to her, and the blush had drawn him too near. The scent of lavender wafted about her, and while he watched the faint pink steal slowly up her neck, the ghost of a long-banished memory had stolen upon him.

  Once, in that same room, he’d wanted to touch his mouth to her flushed neck, but hadn’t dared, only stood and let her scent steal into his blood and make him desperate.

  Despite all efforts to banish it, the recollection still hung in his mind. The blush was long gone, and she seemed cool enough at present, her attention on her painting. Marcus sat the length of the playroom table away, his nephews diligently working on either side, but he couldn’t concentrate.

  The room was cozy and warm. From time to time the lavender scent stole toward him, then vanished. If it would only make up its mind and do one or the other, linger or go, he might make up his mind, too, and settle to his work or depart. But her scent continued to beckon and withdraw, leaving him uncertain and restless.

  As he looked up for the hundredth time, he found Delia studying him, so gravely that he couldn’t help but smile. She answered with an impish grin. Then she slid down from her chair and scampered to his side, where she stood on tiptoe, balancing herself with one hand on his arm while she tried to peer over the table at his painting.

  Marcus picked her up and sat her on his lap. It never occurred to him to ask if that was where she wished to be. The action was reflexive. It must have been correct, for Delia settled there, perfectly at home, and offered to help. Even to a seven-year-old it was obvious he wasn’t making satisfactory progress.

  “I shall rinse the brush for you,” she said, “and help you pick the colors.”

  Livy took umbrage at this. “You don’t know the right colors. Your dragon is pink and blue.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Greyson likes pink and blue dragons,” Christina said. “If he doesn’t, he is perfectly capable of telling your sister so. Mind what you’re doing, Livy. Your dragon’s tail is about to go off the paper and onto the table.”

  Livy frowned. “I’ve spoiled it.” Ignoring her mother’s reassuring murmur, the child scrambled down from her chair, snatched up the painting, and trotted to Marcus.

  “It’s spoiled,” she told him, her countenance dejected as she held up the painting. “Delia made me spoil it.”

  “I did not,” said Delia.

  “It’s not spoiled,” Christina said, “and you are not to plague Mr. Greyson.”

  “It’s just broken,” said six-year-old Robin.

  “Uncle Marcus will fix it,” his brother consoled, patting Livy on the
head with all the condescending superiority of his eight years.

  “You have to fix it yourself,” said Delia. “I’m helping him with his dragon.”

  Marcus heard a faint, choked sound, suspiciously like laughter, from the other end of the table. But when he glanced that way, Christina’s countenance was sober.

  “You made me spoil it,” Livy accused her sister. “You were whispering secrets to Mr. Greyson and telling wrong colors.”

  Another smothered chuckle. This time, he discerned a twitch at the corner of Christina’s mouth. That was all. No reproach for the girls, no assistance to him in parlaying a truce.

  Marcus took the painting from Livy and studied it. “It isn’t spoiled at all, but different and interesting. It looks to me as though your dragon has a strange and mysterious kink in his tail.”

  Livy edged closer and, putting her hand on his, lowered the painting to her eye level for scrutiny. “What is a kink?” she asked. ‘Is it pretty?”

  The little hand on his told Marcus what the matter was: if Delia sat on his lap, Livy must, too. “Come, I’ll show you,” he said. He shifted Delia onto one knee, and took Livy up on the other. Hostilities ceased.

  Taking up his brush, he finished the dragon’s tail, making it curl up and around in the space Livy had left for the sky.

  Delia grew restive. “Now her dragon is more beautiful than mine,” she complained.

  “No, it can’t be,” he said. “I’m sure your dragon is quite handsome.”

  Delia shook her head. “It isn’t. Mine is horrid.”

  “Since you have promoted Mr. Greyson to chief artist, we shall let him judge.” There was an edge to the mama’s voice and a flush on her countenance as she held up Delia’s painting for Marcus’s perusal. He wondered whether she was vexed, and with whom.

  “It is very fine,” said Marcus, his gaze moving from the painting to the mama. He remembered that delicate tint: a whisper of pink upon alabaster. The first time he’d dared to take her hand in his, she’d colored like this, but she hadn’t pulled away. He’d held her small, gloved hand as carefully as though it had been the most fragile of eggshells, and died of happiness during that too-brief moment. Then they’d heard the others coming, and he’d had to break away and pretend he’d only just that instant accidently encountered Christina in the garden.

  She wore no gloves now. Her hands were slim and elegant, smooth and white and soft.

  He wrenched his mind elsewhere, to Delia, who tugged at his coat sleeve, asking him to make a kink for her.

  “Perhaps Mama would be so kind as to pass Delia’s painting this way,” he said tightly.

  She rose instead, and brought it to him, then lingered to watch while he gave Delia’s dragon strange and mysterious pink and blue claws in lieu of a kinky tail.

  He wanted to get away.

  He found the little girls adorable and their fondness for him touching. He didn’t mind their negligible weight or the tiny kid shoes absently kicking at his shins. It wasn’t on their account he wanted to bolt, or even entirely on account of their mother, standing a few inches from his shoulder.

  Marcus wanted to get away from himself, to disengage from the flesh-and-blood Marcus, because that flesh and blood was responding quite on its own, as though his body belonged to someone else.

  He was painfully aware of Christina’s nearness and of her too-familiar scent and warmth, and of long-buried longings stirring to life.

  When he added a whirl of smoke above Delia’s dragon’s head, Christina’s voice with its trace of huskiness came from above his shoulder: “Now you must give Livy smoke, too, Mr. Greyson. Then I would advise you to add no more adornments. Otherwise the rivalry will go on endlessly, I promise you.”

  It was a mama’s voice, wise in the ways of her offspring. Yet Marcus could hear its distant echo from long ago: I promise you, I’ll be there. I promise.

  He had waited all those long, miserable hours... and she never came.

  He set his jaw, and painted smoke for Livy’s dragon, and promised himself that ghosts or no ghosts, no woman, however beautiful, would make such a fool of him again. That, beyond doubt, had ended a long time ago.

  ***

  At tea, Julius and Marcus argued about Greece, so hotly that Christina was sure they’d come to blows. Her tension must have been evident, because Penny edged closer on the sofa and patted her hand. “They won’t kill each other,” she said. “It’s simply that Marcus doesn’t believe it’s a proper discussion unless everyone loses his temper. In that, you see, he hasn’t changed at all.”

  She had to raise her voice to be heard above the men. Even so, the brothers had been so furiously involved in their debate that Christina was startled when Marcus abruptly turned toward the two women.

  “I don’t believe it’s a proper discussion,” he said, “when one’s opponent is incapable of comprehending the simplest facts. I’m obliged to raise my voice in hopes of getting some small piece of information into my brother’s thick skull.”

  “You won’t persuade me it’s in our government’s interest to support the cause of anarchists,” said Julius. “Only look what came of revolution in France.”

  “Only look at the American colonies,” Marcus retorted. “Which is ridiculous to ask of you, since you’ve never ventured farther west than Falmouth.”

  “It’s ridiculous to insist that a man can’t make reasonable judgments about any circumstance he hasn’t personally witnessed. Even our foreign ministers—”

  “Perceive the world as someone else has told them they must. They believe whatever their teachers told them, or whichever ignorant blockhead has designated himself an authority.”

  No, Marcus hadn’t changed in this, Christina thought. It was partly his radical views, but more his tactless, often insulting way of expressing them, that a decade ago had made him unwelcome at most social gatherings and alienated virtually all his peers.

  “You’re frowning, Mrs. Travers,” Marcus said. “You take exception to my opinion.”

  His expression was mocking. She wondered if he thought a mere female was incapable of possessing an opinion, let alone disagreeing with that of a male. “I certainly don’t agree that the two revolutions arose from the same circumstances, or had the same result,” she said.

  “Both chose to overthrow what they perceived as tyranny.”

  “That appears to be the only parallel,” she said. “The French beheaded their monarch and most of their aristocracy. The Americans merely severed a relationship. It was England that made a war of it.”

  His dark eyebrows lifted. “Indeed. England, in your view, was rather like a lover the Americans had tired of.”

  “If I pursue that curious analogy,” she said evenly, “I might say that the Americans found their lover’s demands unreasonable.”

  She discerned what might be a flicker of surprise in the gold-glinting eyes, and then, more clearly, a flash of anger. She felt a small, fierce stab of satisfaction. He had started it. If he’d thought he could hurt her with the oblique reference to the past, if he thought she would shrink away and blush, he had another think coming.

  “And I might say the mistress was capricious,” he returned.

  She met his challenging stare straight on. “You might, but you don’t believe that. Your sympathies are with the Americans. You’re merely playing devil’s advocate, Mr. Greyson. You baited Julius, and now you’re baiting me.”

  “Certainly. He baits everyone,” said Julius, moving to the tea table. “There is nothing he likes better than a great, noisy row. Come, Marcus, stop up your mouth with a sandwich, and stop staring at Christina as though she’s sprouted another head.”

  Marcus opened his mouth, then shut it, and Christina felt a prickle of annoyance with Julius. The argument had hardly begun, and he had smoothly squelched it. No doubt Julius thought she couldn’t defend herself. He, too, had another think coming.

  Marcus silently approached the tea table, but made no move to take
anything. He looked at the tea tray, then at her. Look, however, was too passive a word to convey what he did. He had a way of taking possession with a glance and fastening all one’s consciousness on him.

  Christina tried to think of something to say to Penny, some excuse to divert her attention elsewhere. But her brain refused to consider anything but the man opposite.

  Marcus did not sit up properly in his chair with his feet neatly planted upon the carpet, but leaned back, his long legs bridging the space between them, one boot crossed comfortably over the other just a few inches from her feet. Christina was rivetingly aware of the dark wool stretched taut over his muscular limbs and of the smoke from the fire clinging to his garments. There was also the scent, faint as an elusive memory, of tansy and cloves.

  She darted a sharp glance at his politely blank countenance. His eyes, she found, were neither blank nor polite. They were intent, assessing. In this way, she reflected, he must have countless times sized up business rivals, not to mention women. The scrutiny was disquieting—as he meant it to be, she thought crossly. It was as deliberate as the way he manipulated the physical awareness. He enjoyed putting others off-balance. He was obnoxiously good at it, even better than he’d been ten years ago. Practice makes perfect, she thought. She wanted to strike him. He had no business playing this stupid, silent game with her.

  “I think you’ve grown... taller since the last time I saw you,” he said reflectively. “That was—when was it?—years ago, anyhow. What were you then— sixteen, seventeen?”

  “Eighteen,” she said. “A year younger than Penny.” She turned to Penny for confirmation, and was startled to find that her friend had left the sofa and was on the other side of the room, talking to Julius. Christina calmly turned back to Marcus. He was wearing a faint, amused smile.