Rivals of Fortune / The Impetuous Heiress (44 page)

“Yes, you did,” agreed Alicia cheerfully.

“Must we recall it?”

“I think it will be an extremely useful reminder whenever you begin to issue commands, as you are prone to do. I shall simply look thoughtful and murmur, ‘An offer of marriage.' I daresay that will give you pause.”

He laughed. “Doubtless. You mean to keep me in my place, is that it?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “But I think you will like the place. And I shall have mine as well, of course. Side by side.”

“I cannot believe it,” he said wonderingly. “It is far more than I deserve.”

“Nonsense! And even if it were,
I
deserve it!” She laughed up at him, eyes dancing.

“You do.” He smiled also, but his tone was serious.

“Even though I am a shameless Londoner?”

“My outlook on the
ton
seems to have been rather skewed. I would not have you different in any particular.”

Alicia could think of but one answer to this. She raised her lips to his and was immediately crushed in his embrace.

Unfortunately, the parlor door opened at that very moment, the landlord and a maid bringing in their dinner. The fat little man looked from one to the other of them with consternation, and it seemed for a moment that he would flee.

“Ah, food,” said Cairnyllan. “Just what we want, eh, ‘Sister'?”

Choking back laughter, Alicia agreed, and in a few moments they were seated opposite one another at a small table before the fireplace and being served roast chicken and vegetables and a tolerable wine.

“You will never be able to visit your mother here,” said Alicia when the servants had left them. “It is lucky this is not Sir Thomas's neighborhood.”

“The man will forget us in a day.”

“I doubt it. That will teach you to joke about eloping!”

“It is just that Gretna Green is so close to my home,” he offered. “The thought inevitably occurs.”

Alicia pretended to throw the salt cellar at him. “If you do not stop it,” she threatened, “we shall be married in Westminster Abbey, with my father and all the other peers in their ermine cloaks and a show of fireworks over the Thames.”

“Good God!”

They were laughing together when the sound of a carriage pulling up outside made them both stiffen and strain their ears. To be found alone together in this way by anyone who knew them would be fatal.

Voices passed along the corridor. They could hear the landlord, but could not make out what he was saying. The newcomer's tones were inaudible.

“He cannot bring them in here,” whispered Alicia. “This is a private parlor.”

“It depends who it is, and what other accommodations he has,” replied the earl. He rose, putting aside his napkin. “Perhaps I had better…”

But the door burst open, and Marianne MacClain strode into the room. “Here you are! Have you lost your minds?”

“Marianne!” they said simultaneously.

The girl looked from one to the other, then to the table and food. “Very cozy. I suppose I have made a tedious journey all for nothing? Have you discovered where Mama is?”

“At Sir Thomas's sister's,” answered Cairnyllan a little sheepishly.

“Which I might have told you if you had stayed to ask.
Why
didn't you? And why did you tell all the servants that Mama had
eloped
?”

“I didn't!”

“You
were
shouting rather loudly,” put in Alicia. “I expect they heard, or your butler told them.”

“Of course he did!” agreed Marianne. “And probably half the servants in London as well. I have done my best to scotch the rumors, but I don't know how it will serve.”

“He was being foolish again,” said Alicia, her tone indulgent.

“And what of you?” replied Marianne, turning. “Why didn't you stop him?”

“I
tried
!”

“And when you could not, you simply came along?”

“I thought I could prevent him from being even more idiotic.”

“Did you? And so you have.” She looked around again. “You have settled him to his dinner in the homeliest way.” Abruptly, Marianne began to laugh. She put a hand over her eyes and laughed harder. She clasped her elbows and bent double laughing. Gradually, the other two started to smile.

“Are you hungry?” wondered Cairnyllan. “Would you care to join us?”

Marianne, speechless with laughter, merely nodded. The earl fetched a chair and ordered another place setting. By the time it had arrived and Marianne had been served, she was in somewhat better control. “You realize, Ian,” she said in a shaky voice, “that you have been scandalously
fast
. I am shocked. It is obvious you need a chaperone desperately, and you are very lucky I arrived to play duenna.”

Cairnyllan looked astonished, then amused at this reversal of positions. “I am indeed,” he agreed, smiling.

Now, Marianne was amazed. “Lady Alicia, what have you done to him? He is being almost
reasonable
.”

Alicia laughed. “I rated him soundly, and as a punishment, I agreed to marry him.”

“You…” The girl turned left, then right. “Are you bamming me?”

“No. We settled the matter just now.” The earl smiled at his sister's expression.

“But this is…wonderful!” Marianne jumped up, rocking the small table perilously, and raised her glass. “A toast! To your engagement and many happy years. And to my new sister. How glad I am!”

Smiling, eyes bright, they all drank.

“And to our dragon of a chaperone,” added the earl, raising his glass to Marianne. Laughing, they drank again.

It was a very merry meal. They agreed that tomorrow they would go to Linden and make everything right with Sir Thomas and their mother. With Marianne's arrival, the tenets of propriety were fulfilled. She and Alicia would share a room. “Perhaps you can have a double wedding,” suggested Marianne a while later. “Wouldn't that be splendid?”

“No, it would not!” declared her brother. “Why don't you go and ask the innkeeper about rooms, Marianne?”

“That is your job!”

He gave her a speaking glance.

She looked at Alicia, then back at him, and shrugged. “Oh, very well. But I shall not leave you two alone for long!” And with a flounce of her skirts, she went out.

Cairnyllan approached Alicia, who had moved from the table to an old sofa against the wall. “Are you all right?”

She looked surprised. “Of course.”

“You have been very quiet for several minutes.”

“I suppose I am tired. We rode a long way today.”

“Yes. And that is all?”

“I…I suddenly felt sorry…”

“Sorry?”

She looked at him. “That our time alone was over. I love Marianne, but…”

“I know.” He sat beside her and slipped an arm about her shoulders. “We shall have many times alone in the future. Whenever we like.”

She nodded. “But not like this one.”

“No. Not like the first. We shall be old, dull married people then.”

Alicia threw back her head, looking outraged. “We shall be no such thing!”

He laughed. “You know, the first time I realized something of my true feelings for you was at Tattersalls. We were looking over Black Lady, and I saw that you and she were much alike. You reminded me of her again just then.”

Alicia stiffened. “
I
reminded you of a mean-tempered filly?”

“Not mean-tempered. She merely needs the proper man to handle her.”

Alicia drew back her fist and punched him in the chest, hard.

His breath came out in a gasp, and he looked astonished. “What…was…that…for?” he choked.

“I am
not
some sort of half-wild creature to be ‘handled.' What a despicable thing to say. Did we not agree to be equal partners?”

“I didn't mean—”

“Your meaning was obvious. And if that is the way you truly think of me, our engagement is at an end.”

He met her blazing eyes, and held them for a long moment, his own puzzled and considering. He had really not thought to give offense.

“How would you like being compared to a great ruddy bear?” asked Alicia. “You grumble and growl alarmingly, but with proper coaxing you can be made to behave, and even dance.” His red brows came together. “You see?”

“I think I begin to.”

“Good.” She paused, then went on, “I am not some sort of doll for you to watch over and protect, or cajole and master, Ian. You must forget that sort of thinking. Only look where it nearly got you! We neither of us need to do that sort of thing to each other.”

“No.” He was looking bemused.

“What is the matter?”

“I was just thinking what an extraordinary woman you are.”

She smiled. “That's better.”

They both laughed.

“I don't know why I have been so lucky,” he added.

She reached up to touch his cheek, and he pulled her close. In the next instant, they were lost in a passionate kiss. Alicia's arms fitted automatically around his neck, and their bodies seemed made to mold together. Both felt a flood of desire combined with a glorious sense of tightness.

Neither was aware of the door opening, or of Marianne's head peering around it. She saw them before she could speak, and closed her mouth again. For a moment she watched, her expression pleased but a bit wistful. Then she withdrew. “Ten minutes,” she murmured, her smile returning, “then the chaperone will have to put an end to these
scandalous
goings-on.”

Order Jane Ashford's next book
in The Duke's Sons series

What the Duke Doesn't Know

On sale September 2016

JANE ASHFORD

The Duke's Sons, Book 2
Coming soon from Sourcebooks Casablanca

Lord James Gresham gazed at the spires of Oxford University, visible above the trees at the edge of his brother's garden; at the early summer flowers in curving beds; at the fifteen people standing about chatting and drinking lemonade. It was a pretty scene, the sort of thing one dreamed of when tossed by a five-day tempest seven hundred miles from shore, or when repairing the ravages of a broadside that near as nothing took down the mainmast. Some poet had a bit about a lovely summer's day. Probably Shakespeare. Nine times out of ten it was Shakespeare. If Randolph was here, and not stuck in his parish in the far north, he'd know the lines, for certain. Randolph had been mad for poetry before he became a vicar, always spouting some sonnet or other. Well, he probably still did. No reason a parson couldn't, and he had a whole congregation for a captive audience now.

James had forgotten all the poetry they'd tried to make him memorize at school. He'd never taken to any subject except those that would help him onto a ship. For as long as he could remember, he'd been mad for the sea, haring off at sixteen to a midshipman's berth on a man-of-war. How green he'd been, and how thrilled. All he'd ever wanted to do was captain a navy ship.

And now he'd lost his vessel, only two years after he'd been given a command at last. The
Charis
had been small, yes, and years of war had left her battered and limping into port, but he still couldn't believe the Admiralty had decommissioned her. All their blathering about reduced requirements, with Napoleon beaten for good and all, and more efficient designs coming along in the shipyards was just so much noise, as far as he was concerned. Like condolences at a family funeral, the words hadn't penetrated his sorrow. But they'd towed the
Charis
off to some backwater and abandoned her. And after ten years of service, they'd shaken his hand, given him a medal, and told him to enjoy a bit of a well-deserved rest.

So here he was, stuck on shore, waiting for a new posting, like who knew how many other navy men. The most likely berth would be second or third officer on a bigger ship, and more years to wait for another command.

The prospect depressed his spirits. It had made him consider, seriously, whether it wasn't time to leave the navy and settle down. Had he, perhaps, had his fill of the sea? Which had brought him here, to this covey of chattering guests in their civilian clothes.

James eyed his hosts, his youngest brother Alan and Ariel, Alan's lively and lovely new wife. According to family gossip, Ariel was a wizard at promoting perfect matches. She'd greased the wheels of Nathaniel's marriage and helped Sebastian win a dazzling heiress. He hadn't been able to resist asking her to see what she could come up with for him. With his prize money from the war, he certainly had the means to support a wife.

James strolled over to a table under a spreading oak and helped himself to a couple of small sandwiches. When he'd left the
Charis
for the last time, and had the leisure to consider his future, he'd fully absorbed the fact that, although many senior naval officers were married, they didn't see their wives and families for years at a time. A tour of duty could take you halfway 'round the world, where even mail packets rarely reached. You were back for a few weeks or months, then off again. Such a life would be nothing like his parents' close partnership. And in that instant, he'd realized that his model for marital happiness was his father the duke and his beloved duchess.

Thus had begun the conflict within him, his love for the sea fighting his desire for the kinship he'd grown up observing. And living, as well, of course. As a boy, he'd been surrounded by a horde of brothers and cousins and aunts.

At times, the back and forth seemed almost like a true battle, ringing with the echo of gun barrages and beset by swinging cutlasses. He couldn't see a way to have both, and yet he wasn't prepared to give up either.

As he usually did at this point, James turned away from the inner argument. He'd never been one to brood, and he didn't intend to start now. He went to join a cluster of his brother's guests.

“
Chelonia mydas
,” said an older man in the center of the group, “maintains the balance of its body fluids by excreting the excess salt from seawater.”

A woman on James's left tittered with embarrassment, earning censorious glances from the others.

“Chel-what?” asked James, his interest caught by the mention of the sea.

“The green sea turtle,” replied the professorial type.

In fact, he most likely was a professor
, James thought. Alan's friends came from the Oxford faculties. His brother was very much at home here, performing his arcane experiments on the nature of light. And if James knew what that meant, he'd be…well, quite another sort of person. “You mean these turtles can drink down seawater and then…be rid of the salt, er, naturally?”

The older man nodded.

“There's many a sailor who would be glad of a skill like that,” James said.

The woman tittered again, her hand in front of her mouth. The professor gave her a condescending glance, as if she was an errant child. “It is one of the elements that allows the species to live their lives far from land,” he added.

James noticed Ariel approaching with a very pretty blond in tow, and he examined her with interest. Although his brother's wife had made it abundantly clear that he couldn't order up a bride to any particular specifications, there was no harm in wanting a handsome one, was there? It seemed to him that the woman one was going to be looking at for the rest of one's life ought to be easy on the eyes, and this girl certainly was.

He stepped forward to meet the two ladies, and was distracted by a flicker of movement at the edge of his vision. He turned in time to see a figure emerge from the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden and stride toward him. In one raking glance, James noted a loose shabby coat, a rough scarf pulled well up over the face, a slouching cloth cap shading it, and, riveting his attention, a pistol in the youth's right hand. It was primed and cocked and aimed right at him.

With reflexes honed by years of war, James was instantly in motion. He lunged low, his speed taking the assailant by surprise. He caught the intruder's gun hand in a crushing grip and forced it upward. The pistol went off, harmlessly into the sky, the sound alarmingly loud in the peaceful garden, even as the weight of James's body smashed the lad to the ground.

The party erupted into a babble of screams and shouts and questions. Some people ran toward the house; some froze in place. Glasses of lemonade dropped to the grass. Sandwiches went flying. James scarcely noticed. He was preoccupied by the fact that the body under him was definitely not that of a stripling. There were tantalizing curves under his hands. The intruder was a woman, not a boy.

“Thief, murderer!” she cried, flailing at him with her free hand.

Blows landed on his shoulder, his cheek. “What? Stop it. Ow!” He tried to grab her other wrist and missed.

“Let me go!”

She landed another good hit, making James wonder if she'd blacked his eye. He managed to get hold of her free arm, and pinned it above her head. Her body arched and writhed beneath him in the most distracting way. “Let go of the pistol first,” he said, tightening his grip on that wrist.

With a sound like a growl, she released the gun. Using her own imprisoned hand, James managed to shove it out of her reach on the grass.

“What have you done now, James?” said his brother's voice from above. James craned his neck and discovered a circle of faces—appalled, curious, frightened, amazed—staring down at them.

“He's a thief and a murderer,” repeated the shooter. “A blackguard of the worst stripe.”

The eyes in the circle of observers focused on James. They were not universally filled with righteous indignation at the attack, he noticed. Indeed, a couple of the women gazed at him reproachfully. The professor was starting to scowl. It was a scene out of one of those nightmares where you faced an examination all unprepared.

Incensed, and bewildered, James gathered himself and jumped up, keeping a secure hold on the girl's arms and pulling her along with him. Before she could get a solid footing on the lawn, he bent, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her off toward the house.

Her fists rained blows on his back. She kicked and squirmed like an eel in his grasp. She called him all sorts of names. It was like trying to carry a sack of maddened cats, and he nearly lost his footing a time or two. She must be some sort of lunatic, he decided. But why the devil had she set her disordered sights on him?

As he maneuvered his shouting burden through the open French doors at the rear of the house, he heard one of the guests say, “Your parties are always so invigorating, my dear.”

But James couldn't spare a moment to wonder about the eccentricities of Ariel's hospitality. The girl had started to claw at his neck above his shirt collar, and it felt as if she might be drawing blood. He hurried into the back parlor and dumped her unceremoniously onto a sofa. The cap fell from her head as she landed, releasing a cascade of raven-black hair. “What the hell are you shouting about?” he asked.

“Thief! Murderer!”

“Will you stop?”

“Never!” Dark eyes burned in a face smudged with dirt and half obscured by swathes of dark hair. “I swore to make you pay, if nothing else!” Her hands crooked into claws.

She looked ready to fly at him and scratch his eyes out. James took a step backward. “Pay for what?”

“You know very well what you've done!”

“On the contrary, I have no idea who you are or what the devil you're talking about.”

“Liar! Thief!”

“Why do you keep saying…?”

Ariel walked through the French doors, looking surprisingly composed. “Alan is seeing the guests out. What's this all about?”

“I think she must be an escaped lunatic,” said James. “Is there a bedlam house near here?”

The girl sprang up from the sofa. She extended an arm to point at him, a picture of outraged virtue, if you were devoted to bad melodrama. “I came here for justice,” she declared.

Ariel looked at James. “I have no idea what she's talking about,” he said.

“Ha!” said their visitor, her full lower lip curling.

“Will you stop?” said James again. “If you're not mad, then you've made some sort of mistake. Got the wrong man.”

The girl shook her head, fists and jaw clenched. But as they simply stared at her, her shoulders slumped a little.

“You're tired,” said Ariel. “Are you hungry?”

Tears started in the girl's eyes. She blinked them away angrily.

“Come with me,” Ariel went on. “We'll get you something…”

“Hold on there,” James protested. “She tried to put a bullet in me!”

Ariel paused on her way to the inner doorway. “Do you have another pistol?” she asked the girl.

The intruder slumped a little more. She bent her head, and wings of raven hair fell over her cheeks. “No,” she said. She did sound exhausted.

Ariel gave James a look that seemed to say,
See?
She went over and took the girl's arm. “Come.”

“Get Mary to help you,” said Alan from the doorway. “Eliza, too. She did fire a pistol in our garden.”

With a wave of acknowledgment, Ariel took the stranger away.

“Are you just going to let her go off with that…assassin?” asked James.

Alan shrugged. “Once Ariel gets an idea in her head… But that's why I mentioned the housemaids. She'll have them with her.”

“Oh, maids. That's all right then.” When his brother ignored the sarcasm, James shook his head. “Where's the pistol?”

Alan took it from his coat pocket. “It's practically a relic, and not well cared for. I think it went off by accident, when you jostled her hand.”

“Jostled?” James couldn't believe what he was hearing. “I saved your garden party from an armed attack. And do I get so much as a ‘thank you'?”

“Thank you,” Alan replied. “You were quite impressive. I've never seen anyone move so fast.” He started to put the pistol back in his pocket.

“Shouldn't you lock that away somewhere?” James asked, somewhat mollified.

His brother looked at the shabby gun, nodded. “I will. Later. It's empty now.” He slipped it away. “So what did you do to her?”

“What?”

“Why is she after you?”

“I've never seen her before in my life.” James gazed at his brother, deeply aggrieved. “Why do you assume I did something?”

Alan raised an eyebrow. “A girl rushes in, waving a gun, calling you a…”

“And you believe
her
—clearly a lunatic—over me?”

“No, but…” Alan shrugged. “You tend to be the one of us who goes just that step too far, James,” he said. “You locked Nathaniel's valet in the garden shed on the day of his wedding.”

“I thought that was part of the prank!” James protested. “Sebastian took his clothes. Robert cut the bell rope.”

Alan conceded with a nod. “That jape did get rather out of hand.”

“And the shed did the fellow no harm,” James pointed out. “It was all part of a joke, nothing like this…female calling me a thief and murderer.”

“And you're sure you don't know why?”

“I swear I have no idea who she is or what she's talking about.”

“How…odd.”

“You are a master of understatement,” James replied.

The two brothers stood, perplexed, in the comfortable parlor, shafts of afternoon sun illuminating pale cream walls and blue and yellow chintz. Somewhere in the house a bell rang. Female voices were audible for a moment, then were cut off by the sound of a closing door. “Perhaps a glass of wine?” Alan suggested.