by Anne Stuart
The Reverend Alvin Purser had crept up behind his back when he wasn’t looking. Just when he’d thought he had plenty of time, with Ellen safely ensconced at Ainsley Hall, Carmichael had announced his sister’s engagement.
Tony had considered declaring himself at that point, then thought better of it. He prided himself on being a decent man, and Carmichael assured him that Ellen was head over heels in love. If he’d had any notion that she wasn’t quite so enamored of her little minister, he might have done something about it. But he took his friend’s word for it and decided to look elsewhere for a bride. Unfortunately no one had even come close to Ellen’s qualifications.
And when the idiotic reverend had jilted her, she’d taken off for the continent before he had a chance to make his move a few dangerous weeks into the already dubious Peace of Amiens. When she returned she had her friend, the mysterious female chef, in tow, and a new, wary air to her.
He’d worked damned hard at getting her to relax once more around him. The reverend had done more damage than Tony would have thought possible, and it would take time getting Ellen to come to heel once more.
He had more than enough time, and so did she. While she was safely on the shelf, she was still only in her mid-twenties, time and enough to provide him with a suitable brood of children, including an heir. If he had any sense at all he’d give it another year or two.
The problem was, he’d lately been growing impatient. Been wondering whether cohabiting with a good woman might not be quite as boring as he anticipated, given that the good woman was Ellen. He’d been very wary at Christmas, afraid the sentiment of the season and his own restlessness might push him into doing something uncharacteristically impulsive. He’d kept away since then, trying to take his time.
But he’d been unable to keep away any longer. Maybe it was past time to become just the slightest bit impulsive.
He shifted in his seat again, and Ellen glanced at him. “You hate this,” she said. “You shouldn’t have insisted on accompanying me, Tony. I’m more than capable of traveling the distance between my brother’s house and mine without you. Binnie keeps me very good company, and Carmichael employs only the most reliable of coachmen.”
Tony glanced over at the admirable Miss Binnerston, now snoring softly as her becapped head drooped over her nonexistent bosom. “I would hope my company would be slightly more enlivening,” he drawled.
A faint, attractive flush darkened her soft cheeks. “Of course you are, Tony. But I didn’t want to drag you all over the countryside in this miserable weather. I just wanted to get home. I know my fears are ridiculous, but I’m not going to rest easy until I know that… that things are all right.”
“That your little chef is all right. Ghislaine—isn’t that her name? Why didn’t she accompany you in the first place? I’m sure Carmichael’s staff would have made her welcome.”
“Actually the servants don’t tend to care much for her. She’s too foreign, too self-contained for them. She’s not a servant, Tony. She’s my friend.”
“I hate to sound repressive, sweetheart, but you can’t make friends of your servants. For one thing, they don’t like it above half. Servants have the strongest class sense of any group I know, and it goes against their dignity to be treated like a friend.”
“I’ve told you, she’s not like other people. I owe her a very great deal, and it’s not something I can easily explain.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll simply take your word for it.”
She looked across at him, quite startled, and he wondered how long it had been since someone simply took what she said without questioning. “Thank you, Tony.”
She’d make an estimable wife and mother, he thought absently, watching her. Sweet, docile, well-bred. But he couldn’t help wondering whether beneath that gentle, faintly worried expression lurked any capability for passion.
“Everything will be fine,” he said, ignoring his own wayward thoughts. “Nicholas will have decamped, the servants will probably have gotten into the port, and your… friend will be wishing she’d had the good sense to accompany you.” A sudden, decidedly unpleasant thought struck him, as he remembered certain proclivities, ones he’d never thought sweet Ellen would share. “She is simply a friend, isn’t she?” he found himself asking.
Clearly Ellen didn’t have the faintest notion what he meant. “What else would she be?” she asked. “We’re not related, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s not what I was asking.”
One thing he found slightly disturbing about Ellen was her tenacity. She wasn’t a sweet, silky-coated spaniel, she was a terrier gnawing away at a bone. “I still haven’t the faintest notion what you’re saying, Tony, and I wish you’d be more specific. If it involves Ghislaine I want to know. I’m worried enough as it is. Explain yourself, please.”
Curse his tongue. He didn’t usually make the mistake of letting it flap at both ends. “It doesn’t concern either of you,” he began, hoping she’d let it rest at that. The mutinous expression on her face told him otherwise. He sighed. If he was going to marry the woman, beget his heirs on her, then he might as well begin her sexual education here and now. “Occasionally women develop a relationship that is… shall we say, a bit too intense.”
She still didn’t appear to understand. “You’ll have to be more specific, Tony. Ghislaine and I have a very close relationship. What, pray tell, is the matter with that?”
Oh, Lord, he thought. “Occasionally women prefer other women,” he said flatly.
“What’s the problem with that? I much prefer the company of most women I know to the men I’ve met. We have more in common, we don’t have to discuss ridiculous things like hunting and boxing and politics—”
“I thought you liked politics,” he said, affronted.
“Well, I do. But not to the exclusion of everything else,” she said frankly. “So explain, Tony. What are you trying to tell me?”
In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought, wishing Miss Binnerston would wake up and put a period to this discussion. The damned woman continued to snore, and there was no way out of it.
“Certain women prefer not just the company of other women, dearest,” he said. “They prefer the bodies of other women.”
She sat very still, as the notion sank in. If her cheeks had been flushed with pale color before, they were now flaming crimson. “You mean they…?”
He nodded, finally beginning to enjoy himself. “Indeed,” he said.
“But how… No, don’t answer that,” she begged.
He found himself smiling in the dimly lit carriage. “It would be difficult to explain,” he said, “since you probably don’t even understand what goes on between men and women in the first place. Most gently bred English girls don’t.”
“I do,” she said, surprising him. “Gilly told me.”
He didn’t waste his time asking how Gilly knew. “That sounds like a most improper conversation to be having with one’s cook,” he observed.
“Gilly and I aren’t proper, we’re honest. You’re right, most gently bred English girls don’t understand what goes on between men and women. I wanted to know, so I asked Gilly.”
“You could have asked me.”
She looked up at him then, surprise stripping her face of its color, but before she could speak Miss Binnerston chose that miserable moment to awaken.
“Dear me,” Binnie said, pushing her bonnet and her wig back on her head. “I must have dozed off. Have I missed anything interesting?”
Calm, even-tempered Tony wanted to snarl. Instead he leaned back, letting his eyelids droop sleepily. “Not a thing, Miss Binnerston. Lady Ellen and I were just discussing the weather.”
Miss Binnerston had her virtues, which included neither sensitivity nor silence. She proceeded to launch into a rambling discourse about the chilly spring weather, and Tony closed his eyes. He found he couldn’t look at Ellen or at her shocked expression, for another instant. If he did, he
might startle all of them by leaning over and kissing her on her astonished mouth. And it was much too soon to bestir himself.
Ghislaine felt dizzy, floating, as Nicholas Blackthorne carried her down the long sweeping stairs at Ainsley Hall. She’d underestimated his strength. After their abortive battle he seemed to have no difficulty at all carrying her out to the carriage, the enveloping cape shielding her from the curious servants. He was right; struggling would avail her nothing. None of the people there would come to her aid, even if they knew she was being taken against her will. And while she might break her neck, and quite possibly his, if she managed to wrench herself out of his grip, the chances were just as likely that she’d simply break her leg. Thereby ruining any future chance for escape.
For the moment she remained docile. There was a cold rain falling when he stepped out into the early-morning air, and the bright silk cape was no protection at all. She refused to shiver in his arms.
She refused to do anything as he dumped her in the corner of the carriage, throwing himself down opposite her. The hood obscured her vision, and for that much she could be glad. She’d found an unexpected measure of peace at Ainsley Hall, and she knew full well she’d never see it again. She didn’t want to risk any sentimental weakness by watching it disappear.
That’s what had brought her to this sorry pass, sentiment and weakness. If she’d simply taken the butcher knife in the first place and dispatched Blackthorne, she could have made good her escape before anyone found his body.
Failing that, her fatal weakness had been Charbon. She hadn’t owned a pet since she was fifteen years old, hadn’t allowed herself to care for even the lowliest of God’s creatures. But when Ellen had presented her with the sweet black puppy, she’d been unable to resist.
And that puppy had been her downfall. If she could have stood idly by and watched Charbon drink poison, then Nicholas would have followed suit.
It was a lesson she thought she had learned long ago. Never allow your heart to soften, even for a moment. The most innocent of creatures could engineer your downfall.
The carriage started with a jerk, and she realized that the omnipresent Taverner was nowhere to be seen. She shook her head, knocking the hood clear, and stared at Nicholas in the murky morning light.
He looked both elegant and dissipated, his legs stretched out in front of him, his neckcloth slightly awry, and he was watching her with a certain dangerous interest.
“We’re on our way,” he said, and the unnecessary announcement filled her with foreboding. “I don’t know how long we’ll be on the road this first day, but I imagine we’ll have a great deal of time to kill. Let’s see how interesting we can make it, shall we?” And he leaned forward and began to unfasten her gag.
Chapter 6
“She can’t be gone!” Ellen said flatly, staring at her smugly correct majordomo. Wilkins had never liked Gilly, had always disapproved of her position in the household, and there was a faint gleam of triumph in his flat brown eyes.
“Mr. Blackthorne personally informed me, Lady Ellen, that Mamzelle would be accompanying him on his trip to Scotland. That she had grown tired of working for a living, and decided there were easier ways to earn her keep.” Wilkins’s pinched expression made it clear that one could expect no less from a French upstart.
“Scotland,” Tony said behind her. “Then he mustn’t have gotten the word about Jason Hargrove’s unfortunate demise. Otherwise he’d be headed in the opposite direction.”
“There’s been no communication from outside Ainsley Hall,” Mrs. Rafferty spoke up, her mouth pursed in disapproval. “Just a creased, dirty letter for Mamzelle, and that arrived after they took off. I’ve left it in your room, Lady Ellen. But then, Mr. Blackthorne wasn’t in any shape to receive messages.”
“Drunk, was he?” Tony murmured in unsympathetic tones, coming up beside Ellen and putting a supportive hand on her arm.
“No, sir. Sick as a dog. It was a near thing for a while, and I was quite unsure how to handle it. It wouldn’t have done for Mr. Blackthorne to have died under your roof. What would people have said?”
“They would have said Nicholas Blackthorne was thoughtless to the end,” Tony said.
“Tony, they’re insisting Gilly took off with Nicholas. That she… she’s going to be his mistress. That is what you were implying, isn’t it?” Ellen turned back to Wilkins with a fierce demand.
Wilkins had the good sense to realize his own triumph wasn’t sitting well with his mistress. He wiped the smug expression off his face, once again the impassive butler. “That’s what his lordship and that evil-eyed man of his said.”
“But she can’t… she wouldn’t… not without a word…” To her abysmal shame, Ellen could feel the sudden stinging warmth of tears as they began to slide helplessly down her cheeks.
The three watched her in miserable silence, Rafferty and Wilkins’s smug pleasure long since vanished at the sight of their beloved mistress’s misery. Tony was the one who took matters in hand, putting his arm around her unhappy figure and leading her toward her pink withdrawing room with unerring instinct and memory.
He settled her down on the chaise, refusing to let her say a word until Wilkins arrived with the sherry, and then stood over her until she downed half the glass and her silent tears had abated slightly.
“That’s a great deal better,” he said, taking his own sherry and sitting opposite her, looking handsome and calm and glorious in her fussy little room. “Now suppose you tell me what’s gotten you into such a pucker? You’ve had a long, tiring journey, and I know you were passing fond of the woman, but surely you’re becoming much too overwrought.”
“Tony, I’m more than passing fond. I owe Gilly my life, and I can’t turn my back on her when she’s in trouble.”
For a moment Tony didn’t move. “What makes you think she’s in trouble?” he asked finally. “I hate to sound condescending, but what would be insupportable for a lady of quality might be quite comfortable for someone less fortunately situated.”
“Like your mistress,” Ellen said with a sniffle.
Tony didn’t bat an eye. “I don’t have a mistress.”
“There’s no need to lie to me. I know all about the Divine Carlotta. Carmichael told me about her, and I must say, she sounds very exciting.” She couldn’t disguise the mournful tone in her voice.
Tony looked more than a little annoyed. “He had no business doing so. As a matter of fact, that connection has been severed.”
“I thought you might have had a falling out,” Ellen said, momentarily distracted.
“Did you? I can’t imagine why you should have troubled yourself with such speculation, or what might have made you come to that conclusion.” He sounded definitely disgruntled and almost embarrassed, a fact which would have amused Ellen in happier times.
“Why, the fact that you were spending so much time with me. I fancied you were angry with your mistress, and giving both of you time to cool off.”
“You spend far too much time with your fancies,” he said. “Including your latest about Ghislaine—that is the wretched woman’s name, isn’t it?”
“She’s not a wretched woman. She’s my friend, and I can’t turn my back on her when she’s in trouble.”
“What makes you think she’s in trouble? Why can’t you accept the fact that she simply decided there were easier ways to earn her living?”
“Because she knew perfectly well that she had no need to earn her living. I wanted her as my companion, my friend. She was the one who insisted she live belowstairs, that she serve as my chef instead of enjoying life as my dearest friend. I would have denied her nothing.”
Tony considered the information for a moment. “Perhaps it was a case of love at first sight? Blackthorne is rather a dashing figure. She might have overcome her dislike of the male gender.”
“Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “You’re right about Nicholas—he is quite wickedly attractive. I suppose Gilly might have fal
len in love with him.”
For some reason her agreement didn’t seem to please Tony. “I can assure you, far wiser women have fallen under his spell. His amours are neither discreet nor honorable. And I’m afraid that love never has much to do with these arrangements.”
“Gilly would never have run off if she weren’t in love. And since they said Nicholas was hovering at death’s door for most of the time he was here, that didn’t give them much time to fall in love.”
“Dear Ellen, even if the estimable Ghislaine happened to imagine herself in love with Blackthorne, I’m certain he was suffering from no such romantic delusions.”
Ellen shook her head, clutching her half-finished sherry in her hand. “I don’t believe it, Tony. I suppose I’m being foolish. I should simply accept the fact—after all, she could hardly have been abducted in broad daylight. But why would she fail to leave me a message, a word of farewell?”
For the moment neither of them heard the scratching on the door. Then Tony’s eyes met hers. “Rats, Ellen?” he inquired smoothly.
The door was pushed open, and Ghislaine’s tiny black dog bounded into the room with an indignant yip, followed closely by a plump underhousemaid. She leaped for the puppy, but the dog was too fast for her, hurling himself onto Ellen’s silk-covered lap with a plaintive howl.
The housemaid turned bright red, managing an awkward bob. “Begging your pardon, your ladyship,” she stammered, and Ellen knew with sudden sympathy that the poor girl was totally unused to conversing with anyone more exalted than the first chambermaid. “The little dog got away from me, and I swore to Mrs. Rafferty I’d watch over it. I’ll take him right away…” She reached out her plump, work-worn hands for him, but the ungrateful wretch growled low in his throat.