Patrica Rice (7 page)

“
I
must find her. You are going home and locking all the doors and windows and setting guards around the clock.”

Two years ago, there had been a time when everyone had feared for her life, rightfully so, since she had almost died. But the villain had been caught and the reason for his villainy no longer existed. She would not return to those horrible days of hiding.

Blanche waved an impatient hand. “That’s ridiculous. They don’t want me. They want Fiona. If they think I have her, the first place they’ll look is Anglesey. I’m going with you.”

“You’ll do no such thing. You can go to Dillian if you fear Anglesey.”

Blanche couldn’t remember ever actually arguing with Michael before. He usually avoided arguments by disappearing into the woodwork anytime someone disagreed with him. She supposed he could find no woodwork to hide behind here. His light eyes burned with the fire of determination, but she had no intention of standing around listening to male ultimatums. She would go with Michael, just as Dillian had once gone with Gavin. The idea buoyed her immediately.

“If you will not take me with you, Michael Lawrence O’Toole, I shall take myself. I know where Half Moon Street is as well as you. I’ll find Elton Alley easily enough. I can hire Runners and search every house if I wish. I can do anything I blamed well want to. Now what do you think of that?”

“Faith, and I’m after thinking you’re needing that caning your faither never gave ye,” he mocked. “And I’m knowing just the man to do it.”

“You wouldn’t lift a gun to a tiger,” Blanche answered scornfully. “I’ll ask the vicar’s wife for a habit and sidesaddle. It won’t take me ten minutes. And if you don’t wait for me, I’ll go on my own. I have no intention of sitting here surrounded by Anglesey crests, waiting for someone to take another shot at me. I can assume a new identity as easily as you. I think I shall be your sister.”

Wonderfully enough, no curses rang out over her head as she marched toward the vicarage. Michael never cursed. That was one of the marvelous things about him. Although right about now, his curses might reassure her a great deal more than his silence.

A silent Michael was a dangerous thing. She would best hurry before he devised some devious plan for ridding himself of her company.

She had the right of it. He couldn’t stop her.

Watching morosely from the shadows of the apple orchard, idly fingering the coin that never left the chain at his neck, Michael saw Blanche mount a nag provided by the vicar. She had chosen to disguise herself in a shabby riding outfit, no doubt outgrown by the vicar’s plump wife, and a flat cap with a veil for keeping the dust of the road from her eyes.

She appeared more the baker’s daughter than aristocrat. But Michael’s eyes saw beyond the obvious. Her straight, elegant seat in the saddle spoke of years of training. She had kept her own gloves, and the expensive lambskin clung to long shapely fingers holding the reins with practiced ease. The partial covering of the veil cast a shadow over delicate skin seldom kissed by sun, and did little to disguise the silken blonde locks carefully arranged beneath. Anyone with half an eye could see a duke’s granddaughter.

Anyone with half an eye could see her groom, too, Michael snorted to himself. She’d concealed the man in shabby coat and trousers, but he sat his horse with as much confidence as his employer. The village men didn’t own horses or know how to ride them. And if she had some funny notion she could play the man as a relation, she had bats in her belfry. The groom’s harsh, weathered features, bandy legs, and rough hands belied any such possibility.

The pair stood out like songbirds on a winter’s day. Scowling, Michael led his horse through the orchard. He wanted to get on with the business of finding Fiona, but he couldn’t leave Blanche exposed and unprotected, not after what had happened today. He felt responsible for the incident, even if he had no proof of any relation between the explosion and Fiona. These were troubled times. He could think of any number of men angry at the wealth of a dukedom. There had been worse incidents throughout England.

Moreover, he couldn’t forget the feeling of Blanche trembling and terrified in his arms. He’d once held a shivering and dying baby bird in the palm of his hand. The experience was much the same, except he knew Blanche, knew the brave woman who had rescued a house full of servants before saving herself, knew what it must have taken to reduce her to hysteria. He had a passion for fixing things, people as well as objects. He felt compelled to right wrongs. But with Blanche, it went well beyond that particular obsession. He wanted her whole again because she was the only perfection he had ever found in this world.

He wanted her whole because he couldn’t imagine his arms around any other woman. Glumly, Michael accepted that unwelcome piece of knowledge. He had held her, and she had molded perfectly against him, her head bumping just along his chin, her slender waist swaying like a reed between his hands, her soft breasts pushing against his coat, and she aroused him as no other woman could.

He snorted in self-deprecation. Blanche could test the mettle of a monk.

He mounted his horse and followed behind the odd couple. There was no sense in torturing himself. If fate or the gods had any sympathy for him at all, they would arrange to discourage Blanche before she reached the city. A pity he had no confidence in either fate or gods.

She stopped and spoke with every farmer on every wagon, every housewife in every cottage along the road. They all greeted her warmly, spoke to her with deference, and every single one of them reluctantly shook their head in negative response to her questions. They all wanted to help, but none had help to offer.

Michael concluded the little brat had slipped across the fields, found herself a stranger passing through, and rode into town unnoticed in her boy’s breeches and coat. For all he knew, Fiona could have stolen a few shillings and caught the mail coach. Someone might have noticed her, but Blanche hadn’t seen Fiona in male garb. She wouldn’t know how to describe the urchin she appeared.

When they reached a town with a coaching inn, Michael gave up his hidden pursuit and rode boldly into the inn yard behind Blanche and her groom. She gave him a look of annoyance and proceeded to question the ostler without acknowledging Michael’s presence. As did everyone else, the ostler knew the Lady Blanche Perceval despite her disguise, and he tried desperately to find answers to please the lady, but he had none.

Michael swung down off his horse beside her. He hid a smile at her blue-eyed glare and doffed his cap at the ostler.

“The child the lady’s looking for bears a strong resemblance to myself. She may well have dressed as a boy and covered herself with mud. She’s a few inches shorter than my lady here. Would you have noticed her if she joined the mail coach?”

The ostler studied Michael’s auburn-haired appearance a moment, scratching his beard stubble as he thought about it. “There’s a youngster on the coach this morn, right enough. Didn’t get a good look, but the size is right, I reckon. Had a boy through here some weeks ago looked just like you, exceptin’ he wasn’t so tan colored. Irish, I thought at the time. Didn’t speak so fine as yourself.”

Michael caught Blanche’s arm, warning her to silence. He wanted to immediately jerk his hand away from the shock of electricity at the touch, but his fingers wouldn’t let loose. “Did they both take the coach into London?”

“The one this morn did. T’other took a coach away.”

Michael produced a coin from his pocket with his free hand and held it out to the fellow. “Thank you, sir, you’ve been a tremendous help. Where does the outbound London coach go from here?”

“Berkshire next. Don’t know where it goes from there.”

It didn’t matter. There were other inns, other coaches, other directions. A man leaving London for Ireland could take many different roads. Michael couldn’t possibly follow all of them, although if the other man who looked like him was Seamus, he’d liked to have followed.

Michael gently steered Blanche toward the inn. “This is as far as you go, my lady. She’s on the coach. I’ll check at the White Horse when I reach London, but it’s a busy place. It’s doubtful if anyone will have noticed her. We can just hope she arrived in Elton Alley safely. I’ll find her there if that’s the case.”

“You may take your hand off me and go where you wish, Mr. O’Toole,” she replied haughtily. “I shall have a sip of tea and go on to London.” She turned a triumphant smile on him. “There isn’t a blessed thing you can do about it.”

He could cheerfully have wrung her neck. Or kissed her. It was a toss-up between the two. Michael released her arm. “You haven’t disguised yourself. Every person on this road knows who you are, knows your direction, and knows who you look for. If the carriage fire was a warning, the ones who set it know you didn’t heed it. You are a walking target, my lady. Do you expect your groom to shield you?”

Her glare died, replaced by uncertainty. He took advantage of her momentary silence to continue. “We can do nothing now. We’ll hire a post chaise and go on to London. If they’re following you, we won’t lose them easily. We’d best pretend you have nothing to hide, go directly to a friend’s house, and disappear from there.”

The look of blatant admiration flaring in Blanche’s eyes shook him. She swiftly covered it with suspicion.

“Why can’t we go directly to my town house? I could find a disguise much easier there, and I wouldn’t have to explain myself.”

“If you are being followed, and I see no reason as yet to believe you are, they will expect you to go directly to your own home. They will have men stationed there, and escape will be exceedingly difficult. However, if we stop elsewhere, it will confuse them. If we stop at a modest home, say Cousin Marian’s, that will confuse them more. They may fear you’re not who they think you are, or that the real Lady Blanche has traded places with her companion, or some such.”

He held up his hand to forestall her argument. “Illusions are created simply by doing the unexpected. Cousin Marian can send all her servants out on a lark and go out herself. With people going in all different directions, who will they follow?”

Michael saw the excitement in her eyes, even though she fought to hide it. A good confidence man would see her every thought. He needed to get her somewhere safe and leave her there. He rather thought he might have to tie her to a chair to do so. His self-proclaimed brother Gavin might be capable of tying his ladies to chairs, but Michael couldn’t harm a hair of Blanche’s head.

“But then where will I go?” she inquired. “I could disguise myself as a kitchen maid, I suppose, and meet you at Elton Alley. But even if we find Fiona, it may not be safe to take her home with us.”

“I can just see you as a kitchen maid,” Michael said dryly, looking down at the lovely soft skin of the hand she’d removed from her glove. “We might tart you out as an expensive ladybird, but we’d have some difficulty explaining that to Marian.”

This conversation had taken too suggestive a turn. Lifting his hand in signal, he ordered the groom to find the lady some tea while he hired the post chaise.

Michael rode beside the carriage rather than join Blanche in the interior. His craving to sit beside her meant that his brain wouldn’t work clearly. Just the faint fragrance of her herbal sachet had his pulse beating too fast.

A thick fog rolled in off the sea as they approached the city. The uncertain March light faded early, and Michael frowned at the implications. Even if it was only early afternoon, he couldn’t allow Blanche anywhere near Half Moon Street in the fog. He itched with frustration at the responsibility of looking out for someone other than himself.

Michael guided the carriage down the street near Mayfair where Gavin’s cousin Marian and her husband lived. They considered him a cousin, too, and he accepted the relationship with gratitude. He’d treated them abominably upon occasion, but family made excuses for family.

Michael swung down from his mount to help Blanche from the carriage. Once she placed her hand in his, he held her hand possessively to help her up the steps, following the groom who knocked at the door. Briefly, her fingers squeezed his and then the door opened and she freed herself.

The footman led them upstairs into Marian’s parlor. Michael watched the skirt of Blanche’s riding habit sway temptingly as he followed her up the stairs. He tried banishing the image of the legs beneath those heavy skirts, but he’d glimpsed their lovely curves when she’d jumped from the window to escape the fire.

“Michael! Blanche! What a delightful surprise.” Marian rose from her seat to greet them. Like all other Lawrences, she possessed a darkly handsome complexion, thick chestnut hair, and sparkling brown eyes. Daughter of a marquess, married to the younger son of an earl, she could have moved in the highest society, but she chose to live in this modest townhouse, on the income her husband earned. Personally, Michael admired them all the more for their ambition.

It also made Marian and her husband, Reginald Montague, the ideal people to help them.

Marian sent him a swift look that said the lack of a chaperone didn’t go unnoticed, but she didn’t speak the words aloud. She merely hugged Blanche, sent for tea, and took her seat.

“I know perfectly well you didn’t come all this way to visit for the mere pleasure of it. Michael has never once entered these portals without some request in mind,” Marian said. “But you shall both keep me company and take some tea and talk no more of it until afterward, as advance payment for my cooperation.”

Keeping an eye on the street outside, Michael paced the length of the room behind the sofa where the ladies sat. He recognized his cousin’s perfume with indifference, but the more subtle temptation of Blanche’s sachet drove him to stand as far away as he dared.

Frustrated, Michael jammed his hands into his pockets and wished himself to Hades. Blanche would make a queen look slovenly. Why didn’t she just marry the duke and get it over with? They obviously belonged together: the slim, elegant duke with his cool indifference and the graceful, lovely Blanche with her passion for family. She would drag out Neville’s better qualities, and Neville could give her the family she craved.