The Abandoned Bride (14 page)

“Brussels?” Julia asked.

“Brussels,” the Baron Stafford replied flatly.

She had been sent the message to leave, even as she had sat down to luncheon in her room. It was fortunate that her possessions had never been unpacked in the first place, for she would not have had the time to fold up a handkerchief to ca
rry
away with her. Within moments of the notice given, footmen had collected her bags, Celeste had handed her her shawl, and she had gone down the stairs to the waiting carriage. Now, as they departed the drive and reached the main road, the baron spoke of their destination.

This time he rode within the carriage and his horse was led outside. He sat back and relaxed against the squabs and spoke to her for the first time since their strange meeting and parting the previous night. When he had come into the coach, she noted that his face bore the marks of strain. He was paler than usual and there was a grim set to his mouth. She thought that perhaps she had angered him in yet another way, but after a few moments she realized that he was distracted and did not seem to notice her at all. Only when they arrived at the main road, did he relax the set of his shoulders and seem to recollect his surroundings. He actually smiled at her before he spoke. But then he said, “Paris, then Brussels,” and she left off searching his face for his reactions and only reacted to the news.

“But I thought only Paris,” she said.

“We are equally distant from Brussels,” he replied, “and I have heard that Robin was last seen there. If we cannot discover him in Paris, then we shall go to Brussels, of course. But I heard that he was on the move toward Paris. And toward Vienna, and Amsterdam and Egypt, and Constantinople as well, for all I know,” he said gloomily.

He leaned his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes. “But,” he said at length, “it is most likely that he is in Paris, for that information came from a fellow who is only usually three-parts drunk rather than four. And the Belgian location was given me by a fribble whom I would doubt if he told me that it was warm at the equator. No, we look for him in Paris, and only if he is not there, will we travel on.”

Since Julia said nothing in reply, the baron eventually opened his eyes to observe her. She sat with her head lowered, her fingers raveling and unraveling a bit of fringe at the end of her shawl. “You have a reason to dislike Brussels?” he inquired.

“I did not think I should have to go so far,” she said sadly. Raising her head, she said earnestly, “It’s foolishness itself, I know, but each of these places you name is the stuff of fantasy to me. They are names I read of in books or heard in my childhood and never thought to actually visit. When you say Brussels, you may as well say Constantinople or The Indies or indeed, the moon. The mere sound of those incredibly faraway places that I shall be forced to travel to sets me to quaking, and fills me with dread. I know it’s nonsensical, but there it is. I am not a very adventuresome soul, I fear. I should have been just as happy to remain at home for the whole of my life.”

She looked so sorrowful and sounded so forlorn that each of the two others in the coach reacted to her mood. Celeste made a little clucking sound and stopped herself just as she leaned forward to put her arms about her new mistress’s slumping shoulders. She appeared so vulnerable, so pale and golden, so fragile a victim that the baron felt at one and the same time the desires to comfort her, to set her free, to forget his mission just to see her smile, and to shake her thoroughly until the truth spilled from her lovely, deceitful lips.

Instead, he gave himself a imperceptible shake and said, as laconically as if the subject was only of passing interest to him,
“
Indeed? How odd, then, that such a meek, timid soul should kick over all her traces and fly in the face of convention as you did. Perhaps age has mellowed you, my dear, for I do not think your history shows you to have always been so loathe to seek adventure.” She winced at his words, and turned her head aside so quickly that he felt as though he had delivered an actual physical blow to her again.

“I am sorry,” he said in a muted voice. “It has been a difficult day for me, and I suspect I was only trying to make it so for eve
r
yone else.”

He knocked on the window to secure the coachman’s attention as he went on to say, “I believe I’ll ride outside for a while to clear my head. I’ve had too much of Sir Sidney’s hospitality and seem to have picked up some of the manners of his set during my visit. I need some fresh air to counteract it.”

As the coach slowed so that he could disembark and mount his horse, he saw that Julia still sat with her head averted and her eyes downcast.

“We shall rest this night at a ve
r
y pleasant inn,” he said. When she did not reply, he said as his hand touched the door, preparatory to leaving, “It is quite famous for its cuisine.” She gave no response. As the door swung open, the baron then said in a rush, as though the wo
r
ds must be discharged from him in one breath, “I should be pleased if you would have dinner with me tonight.” Then, as though he realized how foolish such a formal invitation sounded from its recipient’s startled reaction to it, he smiled wryly and added, “You
do
have the option of refusing me, you know, Miss Hastings. I insist you accompany me to Paris, but I invite you to my dinner table.”

There was a silence as he paused, bent double, at the door to the coach awaiting her reply. The expression upon his cool visage was unreadable.

“Thank you,” Julia said slowly, drawing herself up until she sat erect, “I should be pleased to join you.”

But now, in the one unguarded moment before he swung out of the coach, the expression upon the aristocratic face was discernible. And it was clearly in that brief instant, wa
r
y.

“Thank you,” he said unemotionally, and was gone.

The day was fine, and it was a relief for the baron to be away from his two companions, the enigmatic Miss Hastings and her new champion. He smiled to himself as he rode down the country road ahead of the two coaches. He had thought to hire on a maidservant for Miss Hastings’ convenience and it appeared he had instead secured the services of a firm ally for her. For he thought it was entirely possible that no matter what risks he had taken in his life, he might never have been so near to death as he had been in that moment after he done with insulting Miss Hastings. Or at least, so he thought from his quick glimpse toward Celeste’s livid face.

He had not meant to hurt the chit, but he had once more. If only she would drop this veil of propriety and be honest with him, it would make the rest of this increasingly difficult journey more bearable. His business for the crown was done. It hadn’t been pleasant, not that he had any brief for Sir Sidney, but it was hard to be the instrument of any man’s destruction. And now he had his own pressing, equally unpleasant business to see to.

He wished that he too could find an ally to be easy with as simply as Miss Hastings seemed to have done. But Makepiece, while a superior valet, was not a friend, nor a confidant, and would be appalled if his master so much as asked his opinion on any matter more personal than that of a neckcloth or a button.

At home, Nicholas thought, feeling for the moment a sudden longing for his native land that surpassed anything his reluctant traveling companion might have imagined he could feel, there were a great many people he could have discussed his problems with. There were his close friends and his family and his gray eminence, his stepfather. But in the general way of things, there was little need to ever so burden those he loved. For, the baron thought suddenly, so struck with the idea that he involuntarily pulled up on his mount’s reins and came to a complete stand in the middle of the road, his life was a tranquil one and he had never needed a confessor or advisor. Or he had not at least since that boyhood affair with Ivy had run its course.

Before the lead coach could turn a
corner
to see the head of the expedition, the lofty Baron Stafford, sitting lost in thought, still as a statue in the park upon his horse, Nicholas kneed his mount forward again. All I needed was a pigeon upon my shoulder and a sweeper at my feet to complete the picture, he thought with some annoyance at his actions as he rode on. But the damnedest part of this journey he had undertaken was that he could think of no one, either at home or abroad, to whom he could have unburdened the whole of his heart upon the subject, so much as he wished that he could.

He had not told his revered stepfather the entire truth. Worst of all, he thought morosely, he had not even told it to himself, until now, until the thoughts became inescapable. For there had been rumors about Robin in London, and some of those were of such a nature as he would not repeat to anyone, not even himself.

He had ignored them. But then, there had also been that obscene caricature on display in the bookseller’s shop window in Picadilly Circus, a full month before. The crowd outside the shop had been both amused and aroused to anger by the illustration of the wild set cavorting abroad while their country’s security was menaced by her enemies. It had been well-done: the buxom lady labeled “Britannia,” about to be sexually assaulted by the evil Napoleon, her cries for help unheard by the rol
l
icking set of fashionables disporting at an orgy behind her. But Nicholas had not been amused. One of those gentleman depicted bore an uncanny resemblance to Robin. And he was shown in the vilest fashion, as the most debauched, or so at least his uncle thought. And so at least he told the shopkeeper when he bought up all the pictures, and so he claimed as he had his solicitors threaten suit against Mr. Rowlandson should he ever decide to reissue it with that same character in the background.

Burning the pictures did not end the matter, and he did not seriously think it would. He was wise enough to know that fire consumes only substance, and never essence. He had heard the tail ends of similar sorts of stories even at Sir Sidney’s house party. Or, he wondered, had he only imagined that he had? But then they always seemed to abruptly trail off when he was noticed in the talebearer’s vicinity.

Then there was this matter with Miss Hastings. He did not think himself so diffident in his judgment of human nature. It was true that Ivy had deceived him, but he had been a boy then, and had never been so misled again. From the first, he had to force himself to disbelieve Miss Hastings. Now, he dared not even call her Julia in his private thoughts, if he were to keep his distance measured and his rage alive. But lord, the baron thought res
tl
essly, with all he knew, still she had all the trappings of an ill-used innocent.

f Robin were truthful, then she was a vicious and dangerous slut that should be shown no kindnesses. “If Robin were truthful!” The baron swore to himself at his own thought. There was the crux of the matter. Why should he disbelieve his own nephew? But her behavior forced him to doubt even the evidence of his own eyes. If by some mad chance she were telling
the
truth, then both he and his nephew had done her a terrible injustice. More unsettling was the fact that if she were telling the truth, Robin was not. And this led to conclusions so painful that the baron spurred his horse forward without realizing what he had done.

The great chestnut horse galloped down the road as though its rider were a fury. The truth, Nicholas Daventry almost cried aloud as he finally pulled the animal up, having raced so far afield that the dust from the coaches was no longer visible, however painful, he must have the truth. He was become as obsessive upon the subject of truth as those Greek philosophers that he had studied at school had been. But none of them, he thought with the characteristic sense of humor that always lurked beneath the surface of his personality and always saved him from despair, had ever sought to extract that rare commodity from the lips of a magnificently beautiful young female.

He would dine with Miss Hastings tonight. The offer had been made spontaneously, as an act of apology, but he would turn it to good use. As he could not shake her story by force or threat, he would befriend her and somehow, he would have the truth from her.

As he sat and quietened his mount and waited for the carriages to come into view again, he smiled slightly as the thought occurred to him that he was not trying something new at all. He was only experimenting with that theory which his own governess had taught him years before. He was going to attempt to catch a fly with honey. And if he could not, he thought, the smile upon his lips becoming not at all pleasant to see, he would capture it in the more common way—by crushing it.

₉

Julia had the uneasy feeling that there was a hairline crack in the looking glass and that was why it seemed to show her the head of one person and the body of another. For Celeste had done wondrous things with her hair: Julia saw a mass of golden tendrils as she gazed into the glass, and the coiling, curling, sinuous hairstyle gave her face a classical romantic look that she had never associated with herself before. Somehow, the raised style also lightened her complexion and made her features appear more delicate. She conceded, as Celeste stood quietly and proudly behind her, that she had never been in better looks. But only from the neck up. Celeste was quite right about that as well.

Looking in the glass, first down at her drab mauve gown, and then up at that exquisitely coiffed head, Julia sighed and agreed with her maid. The juxtaposition
was
absurd. It was the visual merging of a countessa and a governess. But unlike her maid, Miss Hastings decided that it was the hairstyle that would have to change, and not the body. For she was a governess, or at least had been one, and she hoped would be one someday soon again. It would be far better to put her hair back the way it had been, she insisted, reaching for her hairbrush,
than for her to attempt to alter the rest of herself to suit her hair.

It wasn’t Celeste’s shriek of protest that stopped her from immediately flattening the creation and returning her tresses to their normal state, it was the next words her maid uttered. For they were undeniably true. It was simply too late to redo her hair, or anything else. The baron had said dinner at eight, and it only lacked a few minutes to that hour.

Julia had agreed to meet her captor and co-traveler for dinner, but only because at the moment of his invitation she had felt a strange stirring of sympathy for him, he so clearly seemed to wish to make amends. But now, as so often happens when one rashly agrees to something that would normally be against one’s best judgment, she felt very anxious about the forthcoming evening. The baron’s presence always presented her with the twin emotions of fear and nervousness, and his attempt at politeness tonight added uncertainty to those reactions. She could only hope that the unexpected invitation might signal the beginnings of a more civil attitude upon his part. And the best way to foster that, she realized as she looked at her mismatched appearance a last time in the glass, was certainly not to show up late to dinner with him.

Celeste sighed unhappily as she handed Julia her shawl. She had done her best with the coiffure, but the dress, although her mistress claimed it was her best, was just as all her others were: homemade, ill-fitting, and not at all the fashion. It was amazing that she insisted on dressing so badly, for so far as Celeste could see, her new mistress had a form as perfect as her face. But it was difficult to see very far. Miss Hastings had been modest to a fault, even to the extent of snatching up towels to hide behind if her maid entered her room after her bath. Perhaps, Celeste thought fatalistically, all English misses were so prim. But to conceal one’s body from one’s own maid was a rare thing indeed, especially as, from what her servant’s practiced eye had been able to spy, Miss Hastings had a form as divine as one could wish.

For although she was slender and as narrowly made as a young boy, with fragile wrists
and
slight shoulders, her breasts were high and shapely, (when one could get a glimpse of their form behind her omnipresent shawls), her waist was curved, her legs long with trim ankles tapering up to firm calves, and
h
er derriere superb. The English, Celeste mused as she straightened the room before she took herself off to her own dinner, were a very odd race. Indeed, she thought, if this was how their females normally went on, it was no wonder that their gentlemen traveled so extensively. The only wonder of it was in how they had managed to populate that small island of theirs in the first place.

The baron was in the private dining parlor before Julia arrived, and he rose to greet her as she entered. She thought the room charming. It was a small chamber with enough space only for the dining table and chairs and two other small chairs stationed near a wide, leaded-glass window which looked out over the inner central courtyard of the inn. Julia was so uneasy when she was first seated that she kept her gaze firmly fixed on that single view, as though there were something extraordinary to be seen there. But in fact it was a commonplace enough vista, with ancient blue paving stones in the center, some attempt at flowerbeds to the left, and a more successful functional kitchen garden far to the right. There were some tall trees at odd intervals, there was a bench or two, a rose trellis, and a well close by the kitchen garden. The stables were fortunately in the front, out of sight of the window. It was a pleasant scene to observe while one dined, but not, Julia had to admit to herself, so attractive as to occupy her attention as completely as it did.

The baron was in his own way a far more interesting sight, but she could hardly gape at him, so after one inclusive glance, she fell to studying her plate, and then the window again. He was dressed so properly for dinner that he made her feel a perfect drab. He wore a blue jacket with a velvet collar, a high white neckcloth, she had gotten a glimpse of a dark waistcoat and darker breeches when she arrived, and the single golden fob he wore keynoted the pristine perfection of his attire. His dark hair had been brushed forward, and he must have recently completed his toilette by washing and shaving, for his white skin seemed to glow and the faintest odor of lemon and bay rum emanated from him. In all, he was an attractive, handsome, perfectly correct dinner partner, and Julia wished she were anywhere on earth but at dinner with him.