A Most Unsuitable Groom by Kasey Michaels (20 page)

"We don't have time to commission anything, Spencer," she said, looking longingly at a length of emerald green silk she felt certain would flatter her hair and complexion.

"True, but the shops along this street are aware that we English don't linger in Calais, and are also prepared with goods already sewn and ready to sell. I'll leave you to it, shall I, and return in an hour."

He reached into his pocket and extracted a small but heavy purse as a tiny, grey-haired woman bustled out from the back of the shop. "Feel free to allow her to rob us blind. You need at least two gowns, much better shoes, a new cape—and undergarments." He smiled down at her. "And nothing in the least bit practical, Mariah. Nor modest, if you can help it. May I suggest lace and silk for your most intimate apparel? You know the French—they are famous for their fine fashions. Montreal or wherever your wardrobe was sewn, my dear, if you'll forgive me, is not."

"You...you're not going to stay here with me?" Mariah asked, feeling nervous for the first time, nervous enough to ignore his insult to what, as it happened, was her own expertise with the needle. "Where are you going?"

"As I've trusted Kinsey to deal with the harbormaster, it is left to me to secure our rooms, arrange for a private dining room and, hopefully, show my shining face where its appearance will be reported back to the man we wish to meet.
Madame,"
he then said, bowing in the old woman's direction. "My—" he hesitated just long enough to give the woman the intended impression as to Mariah's morals or the lack of them "—
companion
wishes your kind assistance. Make me smile.
Madame,
make me happy."

"I could hate you," Mariah said as the old woman; frowned at Mariah as if she didn't want her in her shop, that frown tilting upwards into a smile as Mariah, gritting her teeth, displayed the purse in her hand.

"Coming ashore was your choice,
Lily,"
Spencer reminded her tightly, his dark eyes hooded. He still couldn't quite believe he had allowed her to leave the
Respite.
He could, however, believe what he planned for her when the summons came to the meeting Ainsley had pinned so much of his hope on. "Clovis will be standing just outside that window. Enjoy yourself."

As the door to the shop closed behind him, Mariah turned back to see the woman still smiling, her black-bean eyes dancing in her head as she asked,
"Celui-là, un tigre dans lesfeuilles, ouí?"

The French she'd learned in Montreal differed somewhat from the woman's speech and accent, but Mariah was fairly certain she knew what had been said.
That one, a tiger in the sheets, yes ?

Begin as you plan to go on, Mariah knew; take the upper hand away from this leering creature. She made her expression stern even as she fluffed at her hair as she had seen some of the women who followed the army do when they wished to.insult another female.
"Une femme regardant pour la remplir des poches maintient sa bouche fermement fermée, Madame. Tout que j'ai besoin, de la peau dehors, deux fois. Et cette soie verte. Rapidement, la Madame, la patience n 'est pas l'une de mes vertus."

Yes, it had been the right thing to say, Mariah complimented herself as she immediately was led back behind the curtain to a small dressing room in the rear of the shop.
A woman looking to fill her pockets keeps her mouth firmly shut, madame. Everything I need, from the skin out, twice. And that emerald silk. Quickly, madame, patience is not one of my virtues.

It was only a pity her knowledge of the language didn't extend to the vulgar insult. A pithy curse or two, perhaps. That would truly have been impressive.. ..

When next she saw Spencer—he was a man of his word and had returned in an hour—it was to see an involuntary widening of his eyes, lasting less than a moment, as he took in the sight of her in one of her new gowns. He'd been correct. After she'd chosen the gowns she liked from an impressive array presented to her, a small army of giggling young women had measured and sewn up the hems and set the last stitches at the side seams.

She turned in a full circle in front of Spencer, refusing to give in to the urge to hold her hands protectively in front of her nearly exposed breasts above the peach-colored silk that fit tightly beneath those breasts, then fell nearly straight to the tops of the neat black satin slippers on her feet. Madame LeClaire had said she looked like a flame in the sun, a reference to
her hair that was beginning to pale badly on Mariah, who had heard this much too often. Why was it that people were so taken by the color of her hair? She'd always envied those with brown or black hair— nobody thought to scold them that their tempers matched their hair.

Madame LeClaire settled a long peach and moss-green paisley shawl over Mariah's shoulders, rather ruthlessly tugged it down so that it rested in the crooks of her elbows and then looked to Spencer for his approval.

"And all in the first stare of French fashion, I'm sure. How much of that purse did you give this
woman?" he asked Mariah.

"Before you deserted me you said money has never been a problem," Mariah told him, lifting her chin in defiance. "So I gave her all of it."

"And worth every last coin," he told her, enjoying her anger. He extended his right arm to
her, elbow bent, only to have her load that arm down with two large bandboxes. Heavy bandboxes. "You are definitely a woman of
my
word, aren't you,
Lily?
How do
you propose to pay me back?" he asked as they left the shop and turned to their left to head down the flagway, a gape-jawed Clovis and Anguish falling in behind them.

"Pay you back?" Mariah shot him a searing look. She thought of the coins still in her pocket, as she had counted out only half to the shopkeeper. She wasn't a complete fool and it was comforting to know she was no longer penniless. She also, she realized, wasn't quite honest. But she was living with former pirates, current smugglers. There were levels of honesty and it would seem she was...adaptable.

"Yes, most assuredly," Spencer said and a happier, luckier man had rarely strolled this flagway, he was fairly certain. And he might as well enjoy the feeling, because he knew her happy congeniality wasn't going to last. "If my question puts you at a loss, I do have a few suggestions..."

"This is a side of you I haven't seen before,
Mr. Abbott"
Mariah told him sweetly as they turned the corner and approached a large building she assumed was their hotel. "The annoyingly obnoxious side, in case I haven't as yet made myself quite clear on that point."

"Have I told you that you are the most beautiful woman in this entire, clogged metropolis?"

"Oh no, Mr. Abbott, don't think you can deflect me. You're taking all of this entirely too lightly. We are here on an important and dangerous mission if you'll recall. Grinning, and making absurd statements, does not lend the gravity to the exercise I believe your father would expect from you."

She was right. But, damn, she was also glorious, gorgeous, outrageous, and he was a bastard for wanting nothing more than to take her to their rooms and bury himself deep inside her, hold her until the entire world went away.

They stepped inside the cavernous lobby of the fairly elegant hotel and Clovis brushed past them, heading for a sour-faced man standing behind the front desk. "Here now! Messages for Mr. Joseph Abbott, froggie—
toot sweet."

"He lacks a certain elan," Spencer whispered to Mariah, who had finally given up her indignation and was beginning to think that Spencer's lighthearted performance was a carefully cultivated act he played out very well indeed. "Ah, but you'll notice that he is also successful. For me, Clovis? Heaven will reward you, my son," he said, holding out his hand for the folded note the other man promptly placed in his palm.

"You play the idiot as if you've done it before," Mariah told him quietly as he escorted her to a wide staircase and they climbed two floors before turning down a long hallway. "And this place is immense. Is...he here, too? In this hotel?"

Spencer raised his eyebrows as he put a finger to his lips, waiting until they were locked inside the suite before answering her. She might be a willing accomplice but he had played this game for several long weeks. "He is, according to information I received from an old friend almost the moment I left you. I had planned for us to be elsewhere, my usual lodgings these past weeks, but a woman would be more comfortable here."

Mariah took a turn about the large, well-appointed rooms, peering into the bedchamber with its single high tester bed, pausing in front of one of the well-appointed windows to look down at the narrow side street below. Gilt and heavy blue velvet were everywhere.

"A veritable hovel after Becket Hall, but I do suppose I'll manage somehow," she said, smiling at him, knowing this room was a far cry from a small cabin half buried in snow, with only a single room and a curtain to seal off an area for her to sleep, or even the three-room cottage she and her father had called their home in the Lake District. "And now?"

Spencer had already shrugged out of his cloak and jacket, exposing the leather harness encasing his right arm and shoulder. He was very careful to look at her as he spoke. Honest. Even guileless. "And now, I'm going to take a nap. I suggest you do the same."

Nightclothes.
She hadn'tpurchased any nightclothes! Dressing her
from the skin out
—
twice
—hadn't included nightclothes. Damn and blast! Mariah spied a marble-backed book on a nearby table and retrieved it "Thank you, but I believe I'm too excited to think of sleep. Oh, look,
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
One of my favorites. I'll just sit here and read for a while, if that's all right with you?"

Good. Just the sort of answer he'd hoped for. Spencer walked over to her and traced a single finger along the enticing skin just above the opening of her Bodice. "It's not, Mariah, but as this is neither the time nor the place for what I do want, I'll leave you your privacy now. Clovis will have a meal sent up to us around five. Now, ask what you are longing to ask." Mariah stepped away from him, relieved and disappointed at the same time. "The note. What was in

itr

"A place and a time," Spencer told her, taking the note from his pocket, crushing it into a ball and tossing it toward the small fire in the hearth. "Eight o'clock, here, in this hotel. I'll be sent for."

"And me? I'm coming with you."

"Just as we've planned. You'll be my small surprise." He looked at her bodice once more. "And a considerable diversion, I believe. You know, Mariah, this might just work."

He was being so...so nice. So adaptable, even complimentary.

Mariah immediately smelled a rat.

Once the door to the bedchamber closed behind him, Mariah raced over to the fireplace, grabbed the poker and managed to save most of the note Spencer had thrown into the hearth.

Sucking on her fingers, for she'd used them to snuff out the still-smoldering edges, she carefully spread the crumpled paper on a tabletop and read the contents of the note.

She ran to the door to the bedchamber and yanked at the latch. Locked.

She looked to the door to the hallway, then ran to it, already knowing what she'd find. The latch refused to move under her hand.

"I
knew
he was being too amenable."

But she was wasting time. She ran to the table and read the message again.

Hotel Calais. Room Eighteen. Two of the o'clock..

Spencer was already on his way to the meeting.

She didn't have to see the inside of the bedchamber to know that it had to contain a second door to the hallway. The clock on the mantel noted the time: just lacking fifteen minutes to two o'clock.

He'd planned this from the moment she'd demanded to accompany him. He hadn't trusted her. He'd thought she'd be in the way. He worried for her safety.

No matter what she believed his reason, she was locked in this hotel room and he was out there, somewhere, without her.

Mariah ran to the window she'd looked out of earlier, already knowing that the drop to the narrow street below would either maim her or kill her outright.

And there was no sense trying to overcome the lock to the door leading into the hallway or the one to the bedchamber, because either Clovis or Anguish undoubtedly was standing outside those doors, just waiting for her to do so. Both men were soldiers and wouldn't succumb so easily to the sight of her holding a pistol as had Jacob Whiting. Besides, she couldn't actually shoot either Clovis or Anguish, could she?

She was trapped, locked up tight, banished as the encumbrance Spencer obviously believed her to be. Buy the foolish woman some fancy new clothes; that will be enough. Tell her you want her in your bed, sigh with disappointment, yawn with fatigue.. .he straight to her face with all the ease of a pig slipping in its own mud and then lock her up where she couldn't cause any trouble.

"I shouldn't care what happens to him, I simply shouldn't," she gritted out from between clenched teeth, then sighed. "But I do, damn him!" She returned to the first window, then moved to the next, and the next, all of them showing her a drop straight down to the flagway.

But the room was located at the end of the hallway, at one of the corners of the hotel. There were two more large windows cut into the other wall. Could that wall be at the front of the hotel? Hadn't she seen a fancy wrought-iron balcony when she'd looked up at the facade?