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Many notes in the rain? She listened. Yes. The heavy splat of fat drops hitting the stone
balustrade, the higher, sweeter tinkle of it striking the glass, and the hollow splash of it on
the empty brass planters on the steps. "I hear it!" she exclaimed.
Lucien opened his eyes, and his fingers moved very slightly against her neck.
"What else do you hear, Madeline?" He touched her earlobe with his index finger.
"Listen."
There were dozens of sounds, some faint, like the clatter of a serving spoon
against china as a footman stirred a dish. Some boomed, like the hard stomp of thunder.
Skirts rustled, voices swirled, rain pattered and slapped and tinkled. "Wonderful," she
said.
So intently was she listening that she heard the hail a split second before it hit the
walkway beyond the windows. It came roaring in, tearing at the trees and gardens,
coming toward the house "Move away from the windows!" she cried. Two-and three-
inch ice stones crashed through the windows, pelting guests with glass and freezing rain.
Someone screamed. People scattered, knocking chairs over, screaming, heading for the
opposite wall.
A pane of glass exploded in front of Madeline s face, and the hailstone smacked
her lip.
"Get out of the way!" Lucien cried. "Everyone away from the windows!" He
grabbed Madeline none too gently and shoved her into a chair. The noise was outrageous,
as if there were a thousand men atop the roof, running and shouting.
She tasted blood and touched her lip.
All at once, she remembered the greenhouse. With a little cry, she jumped up and
ran out of the room. Someone called her name, but she paid no attention.
The guests and servants were huddled in a knot against the far wall of the dining
room, so the halls were eerily silent but for the pelting, thundering rain and hail.
Madeline ran, skidding madly in her satin slippers, and kicked them off to gain purchase
on the marble floors of the passageways. She thought she heard someone call her again,
but it was impossible to know through the roaring noise of the storm.
The greenhouse was at the far southwestern end of the house, through a series of
connected rooms. She passed no one.
As she entered the main foyer, the hail seemed to slow a small bit, and she heard
an odd, strangled noise. Thinking there was an animal caught somewhere, she glanced
over her shoulder
and slammed into the wall in her surprise. Through the library doors, in the
dark, dank room, were two people silhouetted against the stained glass. The noise came
from one of them, the woman, who made it again as Madeline stared, literally transfixed
by the sight. A wash of pale brown light from the Madonna s gown in the stained glass
spilled over the woman s white, naked hip, in high contrast to the gold and plum skirts
bunched around her waist. Her head was flung back, her bare legs gripping the man who
moved between them in almost violent passion.
Juliette and Jonathan.
Choking in embarrassment, appalled and aroused, Madeline averted her eyes,
trying to find breath enough to move. Feeling oddly dizzy, she put a hand against the
wall, and finding it cool, pressed her cheek to it as well.
A cry rang out, helpless and ecstatic, and Madeline closed her eyes tighter yet.
Still too dizzy to move, too affected, she most desperately wished to escape.
Then Lucien was beside her. She smelled him, and opened her eyes. In his eyes
there glowed a sultry look she hadn t seen before, and his nostrils flared. He took her
hand and led her away from the library, pulling her by the wrist. Still a little stunned,
Madeline allowed herself to be led. The hail slowed, and although it was replaced with
more of the torrential rain, at least she could hear.
"Where were you going?" Lucien asked.
Madeline cursed and lifted her skirts. "The greenhouse." She started to run once
again. This time Lucien ran with her.
At the door, she paused and peeked through the window. "Oh, blast!" she cried,
and yanked open the door. A burst of cool wet air hit her. It poured in from the broken
panes. Hailstones littered the tables and gravel floor, melting into puddles where they
rested after their destruction had been wrought. It was worse than she d expected.
The most urgent problem was the ice on some of the plants the delicate orchids
and exotic ferns she grew for pleasure; the exotic vegetables she grew for
experimentation. The cold air would send them into a traumatic shock. Unmindful of her
attire, she stuck her feet into a pair of boots and hurried forward to scoop ice from the
pots and brush the worst of the shattered glass from tender leaves.
Lucien watched her for a moment. "May I help you? Tell me what to do."
"It ll ruin your clothes."
"I have more clothes than the king." He shucked his coat and waistcoat, and hung
them with the aprons by the doorway. He took one of the long aprons and brought it to
her. "You don t want to soil that beautiful gown."
He tied it around her before she could move, and his touch on her sides,
impersonal as it was, sent a rippling over her skin. Rain poured in through broken panes,
splashing into the pools already forming under the tables and along the walkways.
"It ll do no good now," Madeline said, brushing ineffectually at the water spots
marking the sleeves and skirt. Her words were breathy.
"A pity," he said. Then he shrugged and took a handkerchief from his pocket. He
held it by her face. "May I? You were cut by the glass. There s blood on your face."
"Is there?" She brought her hands up. For the first time, she became aware of the
stinging scratches and the annoying thickness of a swollen lip. She touched the latter with
her tongue, probing the soreness experimentally.
"Now there s a little mud, too," he said with a crooked smile.
"Oh. Please, then, wipe it away."
Wetting the cloth under a stream of rain pouring through a hole overhead, Lucien
gently wiped at her cheeks, then her forehead. He stood close, but not obnoxiously so,
and his body seemed peculiarly warm. A fine trembling stirred in her limbs. She reached
behind her to brace herself on the table.
"Close your eyes," he said.
Madeline complied. He wiped gently at her eyelids, and again over her cheeks,
then down to her chin. The curve of his knuckle, warm and dry, brushed her lower lip,
back and forth as he lightly rubbed her jaw.
A flash of the scene in the library jolted through her mind violence and sweat
and desire and the annoying heat pressed into her abdomen, aggravated by the light
brush of Lucien s crooked fingers on her lower lip.
Madeline opened her eyes.
He stared down intently into her face, his cat eyes gleaming a wild combination of
colors gray and blue and green mixed in the most alluring gradations. "Your face is
extraordinary," he said quietly, and stroked her jaw. "The lines make me think of the
flight of birds, sailing along in perfect grace." His fingers swept along a cheekbone, over
her mouth, swooped down the line of her nose and again along her lip.
A shiver rocked her, and she could see Lucien felt it. For a moment, the long
muscle in his jaw tightened, and his lids grew heavy over the gloriously jeweled eyes. "It
aroused you, seeing your stepmother and Jonathan like that."
"No," she whispered. "It embarrassed me."
His thumb settled on her lower lip, precisely in the center, and Madeline ached to
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