The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (20 page)

The wariness turned to speculation. “So that’s why Fiorila switched—”

Gwen cut her off. “I saw the letter and the picture. A little girl. She is being held somewhere in the French countryside.”

“Do you know where?”

“No, but it would be easy enough to find out.” Easy enough for Jane, with her resources. Hers. Not theirs. Never theirs. Gwen lifted her chin. “Fiorila has never acted against us before. She does this only under coercion.”

“Are you suggesting we rescue the child?”

“We?” Gwen couldn’t hide the pain in her voice. “There is no we. You’ve made that quite clear. But if I were you, I would see to it.”

Without waiting for Jane’s reply, she turned and walked away, back to the darkened morning room.

“We’ll talk in the morning,” she heard Jane say behind her.

But by the morning, everything had changed.

Gwen woke on the settee in the morning room. She felt as though someone had gone over each of her limbs with a hammer.

She dragged herself painfully into her room, discarding last night’s much-abused dress. It still smelled faintly of smoke. She dredged cold water over her face, trying to wash off the grime of the Hellfire caverns. Her eyes felt sore and crusted, her cheeks sticky with tears she didn’t remember having shed. She must have been crying in her sleep.

She had dreamed herself back twenty years ago, dreamed herself on the doorstep of Tim’s house, that moment when she had tripped and fallen, unable to catch herself, cartwheeling down, down, down . . .

She raked a brush through her tangled hair, welcoming the pain. It made a distraction from everything she didn’t want to think about.

When Gwen came down, Jane was at the table in the dining room, sitting beside a china pot of chocolate, her glossy head bent over a letter.

She looked so normal in her sprigged muslin gown, with her pot of chocolate. It might have been any morning, on either side of the Channel. Gwen moved stiffly forward, not sure how to begin, whether to maintain an aggrieved silence or just go back to things as they were and hope that the world would follow suit.

Jane looked up, her eyes lighting on Gwen. “I’ve sent someone to deal with Fiorila,” she said.

Gwen wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a peace offering.

“And?” she said brusquely.

“If we can get her daughter out, Fiorila will break her ties with Talleyrand and abandon the search for the jewels,” Jane said promptly, and then ruined it by adding contemplatively, “Not that that matters. Now.”

“It matters to Fiorila,” said Gwen tartly. She’d had enough of Jane’s omniscience. She could feel her voice rising with her emotions. “These are not just chess pawns; they’re people.
People.
”

Jane looked up at her over her chocolate, quizzically. “I know,” she said. Before Gwen could say anything else, she said quickly, “The girls have been found.”

“What?” Gwen’s throat was dry. “Where?”

“I’ve had a letter from Amy.” Jane tapped the piece of paper in front of her. “They’re at Selwick Hall.”

“They ran, then.” Gwen’s mind was moving very, very slowly. Outside, the sky threatened rain. “They weren’t taken.”

“Yet. If they have those jewels, they won’t be safe, not even at Selwick Hall.” Jane rose and rang a bell. “I’m having the chaise brought round immediately. We leave at noon.”

“We?” Gwen didn’t move from her place in the doorway. “Do I have the honor of being part of your plans?”

“You don’t think I’d go without you?” said Jane.

Gwen didn’t know what to think. “I didn’t think you would keep information from me either,” said Gwen, “but look what’s become of that.”

Jane looked as though she meant to say something more, but the butler entered and she looked at him with something like relief. “Oh, Gudgeon. We’ll need the chaise brought around and our trunks brought down.”

“You’d best send a note to the Colonel,” said Gwen gruffly, following Jane out into the hall. “He’ll want to know.”

He would be overjoyed. He would be reunited with his daughters, and Gwen—Gwen wasn’t entirely sure what she would do. Last night’s conversation with Jane had left her deeply shaken.

Jane looked back at her over her shoulder. “Don’t you think he’d rather hear it from you?”

“I’ll see to the trunks,” said Gwen, and did.

She was just supervising their removal to the front hall when a knock sounded. It was William at the door, a rather wilted bouquet of purple flowers in one hand.

“Who may I say is calling?” Gudgeon asked grandly.

William thrust the bouquet at the butler and stepped around him, cutting between Gwen and a pile of trunks. “Are you going somewhere?”

Unlike her, he had managed to have a bath somewhere along the line. His hair was clean and well brushed and his cravat was neatly, if plainly, tied. Gwen was very aware of her own greasy hair and the circles under her eyes that came from a night sleeping in an unnatural position on the settee.

William’s voice softened. “I’d come to ask you if you’d come to Bristol with me.” He switched to wheedling. “If anyone can get Kat to see sense, you can. She’ll not listen to me.”

“I can’t. I was just about to send you a note—”

“Colonel Reid!” Jane was on the stairs. She trailed down in the best hostess manner. “And Monsieur de la Tour d’Argent. What a happy surprise.”

Gwen hadn’t even noticed the Chevalier standing there. He must have snuck in behind William. Not that it required much sneaking. Her attention had been elsewhere.

The Chevalier proffered his own floral offering, an alarmingly large bouquet of pink roses. “I hope you shall take this small offering—”

Gwen sniffed.

Next to her, William swallowed a grin. “Not much of an idea of scale, has he?” he whispered.

The Chevalier was still talking, the rolling phrases rolling on. “—token of my esteem and regret. I have come to take my leave. The Prince of Wales bids me to Brighton, undoubtedly on so pressing a matter as a new pattern of wall hanging.” He pressed a hand to his heart. “But believe me when I say that I shall never have regretted a leave-taking so much as this one.”

“What an odd coincidence,” said Jane brightly, dropping the bouquet onto the top of a pile of trunks. “We leave for Sussex as well.”

“You do?” It was absurd to feel quite so pleased by the distress in William’s face, but Gwen did. It was nice to know that someone valued her presence. “You are going away, then. It’s not because—” He broke off, flushing to his ears.

Gwen felt her cheeks turn an answering red. “No,” she said shortly.

Jane was watching them with interest. “Colonel,” she said, “you stayed me in the happy act of writing you a note.”

“The happy act . . . ?”

Gwen broke in. “The girls have been found.”

No matter how Plumeria and Sir Magnifico pled, Amarantha remained obdurate. The Knight of the Silver Tower held her in his thrall. So intent were they upon their pleas that neither noticed the darkening of the shadows as the dread knight’s minions closed in behind them.

—From
The Convent of Orsino
by A Lady

“L
izzy? You’ve found Lizzy? And . . . and . . .” William couldn’t remember the other girl’s name.

“Agnes,” said Miss Wooliston soothingly. “Yes, both of them. They are safe and well and with my cousin.”

“All this time?” Relief surged through him, a relief so intense it made him light-headed. “Are you quite sure?”

“Yes,” said Miss Wooliston. “I had a letter from my cousin this morning. They have been taking an unauthorized holiday.”

William found himself laughing, laughing out loud, the sound echoing off the plaster ceiling, the gilded mirrors. “I’ll be damned! Those little imps!” The laugh turned rough around the edges, just short of a sob. He sat down abruptly on a small gilded bench. “Thank the Lord, they’ve been found.”

“Yes,” said Gwen, and there was an odd note to her voice. “The mystery is solved.”

The Chevalier broke in, his teeth flashing in a smile. “May I have your permission to relay the news to my cousin? She will be overjoyed. She has been blaming herself.”

“Please send her our apologies,” said Miss Wooliston gently. “It was very wrong of the girls to worry her.”

The Chevalier raised his brows. “What is seventeen if not for causing the heads of one’s elders to ache?” He paused before saying delicately, “Since we travel in the same direction, I would offer my escort—but one does not like to keep the Prince waiting.”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Wooliston. “Most certainly not!”

“Especially not in such matters as wall hangings,” muttered Gwen. “The last time he was left to his own devices, he built that wretched pavilion.”

Miss Wooliston gave her chaperone a quelling look. “You mustn’t let us keep you. We shan’t leave for at least another day and probably more. There is no hurry—now that we know the girls are safe and well. It will do them good to have to cool their heels.”

Wait? William was ready to set out right now. He wanted Lizzy where he could see her, safe and sound, and he’d be damned if he’d leave her in the care of others again.

“But of course,” said the Chevalier. “The chaise outside . . . ?”

“For my parents,” said Miss Wooliston promptly. “They return to Shropshire. My father does not like to be so long away from his sheep.”

“Lucky sheep to be so loved,” said the Chevalier. He tipped his hat. “Perhaps we shall see one another in Sussex.”

“Perhaps.” Miss Wooliston’s voice was all sweetness. “Safe travels, sir.”

William turned to Gwen. “All this about not leaving for another day—I’d rather have my Lizzy where I can see her.”

“Trust me, sir,” said Gwen, and he noticed that there was something celebratory missing from her manner, “you are not the only one.”

The door closed behind the Chevalier. Miss Wooliston watched through the window as he swung up into his curricle. The Chevalier slapped the reins. Miss Wooliston let the drape drop back into place.

“He goes to Sussex, does he?” said Gwen, looking at Miss Wooliston with narrowed eyes.

Miss Wooliston inclined her head, saying lightly, “I believe he has an interest in gardening and thinks to find the soil in Sussex particularly fertile. In our time together, it became clear that he was well versed in horticulture.” Turning to the butler, she said rapidly, “Gudgeon, lash the trunks to the chaise. The special trunk on top. We leave in an hour.”

“But—” William looked from one woman to the other. “I’d thought you weren’t leaving until tomorrow.”

“A change of plans,” said Miss Wooliston briskly. The doll-like sweetness was gone. She was all business. “We can give you the direction if you would like to follow along behind, once your business in Bristol is done.”

“But then why—” William looked to Gwen for explanation, but she was watching her charge, her brow furrowed, her lips pursed. Ah, he thought. This had to do with the Chevalier. He remembered the scene in the opera last night, Gwen’s obvious distress.

“My business in Bristol will wait. I’ll come with you,” said William, on an impulse. “It shouldn’t take me more than half an hour to set my affairs in order.”

“There’s not enough room in the chaise,” Gwen said brusquely.

To William’s surprise, it was Miss Wooliston who came to his aid. “It seats three,” she said. “There should be plenty of room for us all. If the Colonel doesn’t mind being a bit cramped?”

“I can ride if it would be an imposition,” he said, sneaking a sideways glance at Gwen. Was it last night? Was that what this was about? He’d tried to make things right with her, but with Gwen, he wasn’t entirely sure what right might be. After that last kiss, he had thought—well, it didn’t matter what he had thought. “I just need your man to show me the way.”

“No imposition,” said Miss Wooliston blandly. “If you’ll excuse me, I must see to our trunks.”

“Wait.” William caught up with Gwen before she could do the same. “Do you mind so badly my coming along with you? You look like you could outstorm a storm cloud.” His voice softened as he said, “If it’s to do with what happened last night—”

Gwen shook her head. “It’s nothing to do with you. I swear.”

William didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Your ward, then?” he asked, and knew he had hit home when her lips pressed tightly together. He took a step closer. “Is there anything I might do to help? I’m told I’ve a good shoulder to cry on.”

Now that he knew Lizzy was safe, he felt like he could carry the world on his shoulders.

“I— It’s complicated. William—”

A series of emotions passed across her face. For a moment, he thought she meant to confide in him.

“Never mind,” she said, and pushed away from the wall, brushing past him. “You’d best hurry. We leave in half an hour, and the coach waits for no one.”

Her straight back forbade further discussion.

She hadn’t exaggerated. When William returned from the White Hart with his campaign bag beneath his arm, the carriage was already loaded with trunks and the coachman perched on the back of one of the four horses pulling the chaise. The seat was generous for two, narrow for three.

“Would you mind sitting in the middle, Colonel Reid?” Miss Wooliston asked sweetly. “The jostling can be a bit sick-making if one isn’t by the window.”

“Certainly,” said William.

He climbed in next to Gwen, who pulled her skirts out of his way with more speed than finesse.

“It’s sorry I am to force my company upon you,” he said softly, as Miss Wooliston spoke to the coachman outside. “I wouldn’t have but for—”

Gwen presented him with her profile. “I know. But for Lizzy.”

“No.” A smile played around William’s lips. “If it hadn’t been for Lizzy, I would have dragged you off to Bristol with me. Perhaps not dragged,” he said hastily, seeing Gwen’s brows begin to draw together. “Let’s just say I would have done my best to persuade you to go with me.”

Gwen folded her gloved hands neatly in her lap, those same hands that had made such inroads across his body last night, grasping, scratching, stroking.

“You are not entirely unpersuasive,” she said primly.

In the past, William had been called charming, eloquent, even glib. But none had pleased him so much as this grudging accolade.

William grinned at her, feeling like he had the world in his palms. “Are you sure you wish to pay me so large a compliment? It might go to my head.”

“Your head is quite large enough already,” Gwen said repressively. She contemplated a speck of dust on her skirt. “Now that your daughter has been found, I imagine you will wish to take her away with you.”

“I’m not letting her go back to that Miss Climpson’s; that’s for certain. That woman gives new meaning to the word ‘ninny.’” He’d thought of renting a cottage somewhere, making a home for his daughters. He smiled at the image of Gwen in the middle of it, keeping both of his daughters in line. “She’d do better with someone like you.”

“A sensible spinster of a certain age?” Gwen pronounced the words as though they left a nasty taste on her tongue.

“A pillar of good sense and fine swordsmanship,” William corrected her ebulliently. Lowering his voice so Miss Wooliston wouldn’t hear them, he said, “You can’t blame a man for trying to find an excuse to keep you by.”

He could tell she was taken aback, but she recovered herself quickly. “Are you offering to hire me?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” he said cheerfully. “But I’m looking forward to your meeting my Lizzy.”

“There we are!” Miss Wooliston picked her way up into the chaise, seating herself delicately on William’s other side. “Do forgive me. I hope I’m not crowding you.”

That had felt like a deliberate hip bump, nudging him towards Gwen. William regarded Miss Wooliston’s serene face, innocent under a bonnet lined with pale blue silk. No, he must have imagined it.

The carriage lurched forward, the luggage chained to the back rattling.

“How long a trip have we ahead of us?” William asked.

“If we don’t run into difficulties, we should be there by tomorrow afternoon,” said Gwen, glancing back through the window.

Before William could ask just what kind of difficulties she meant, Miss Wooliston said, “According to my cousin, it took the girls a full three weeks to make their way to the Hall, walking most of the way.”

William thought of the cozy room at Miss Climpson’s, not luxurious perhaps, but certainly better than sleeping under a hedgerow. “What possessed them to do such a thing?”

“I imagine they didn’t think it would take them that long,” said Miss Wooliston.

She spoke so matter-of-factly that it took William some time to realize that she hadn’t answered the question at all.

Gwen moved restlessly in her seat. “Do you think they also learned of the Chevalier’s horticultural activities?” she said, looking pointedly at her charge.

“It might have come to their attention,” said Miss Wooliston noncommittally. “As a simple matter of deduction.”

William was beginning to suspect that he was missing something. Horticulture was obviously a euphemism. For attempting to seduce the young ladies at the school, perhaps?

“Are you saying the Chevalier was doing a spot of gardening at the school?” he said heartily.

“You might say that,” said Gwen, but she was looking at her ward, not at him.

Miss Wooliston said nothing.

The carriage moved briskly through the early morning traffic, away through the outskirts of the city, leaving the shops, the baths, the assembly rooms, behind. The silence in the coach could only be termed frosty. William took matters into his own hands, saying loudly, “And who is this the girls have gone to?”

“My cousin Amy,” said Miss Wooliston. “She lives with her husband at Selwick Hall in Sussex. The girls are most attached to her.”

She looked through the window, not the casual glance of a lady admiring the scenery, but craning her neck around, watching the road.

“Are you looking for something?” William asked.

“Hmm?” Miss Wooliston looked at him as though she had forgotten he was there. She shook her head. “No. Nothing. Just a—rare plant by the side of the road.”

“More like a weed,” sniffed Gwen.

Ah, that was it, then. Miss Wooliston must be looking for the Chevalier’s coach, also on the road from Bath to Brighton. And Gwen—well, it was clear to see she didn’t approve. A weed indeed. She didn’t mince her words, his Gwen.

William’s lips twitched. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just that he was ridiculously, euphorically happy to know that his daughter had been found. Something about Gwen made him smile. And it wasn’t just the memory of last night, although that in itself was certainly enough to bring a reminiscent grin to his lips. No. It was Gwen in all her prickly cantankerousness. She’d fight for the last word on her deathbed and probably win it, too.

She reminded him, in an odd way, of Maria. Not in looks, although, if truth be told, it had been long enough that Maria’s image had faded and blurred in his brain, like a watercolor left out too long in the rain. Maria’s voice was a soft Welsh burr, so different from Gwen’s cut-glass tones, but there was beneath it all a certain similarity of spirit. Maria hadn’t stood for any of his nonsense either.

William found himself thinking again of that cottage, but it was Gwen he saw beneath the apple tree in the yard, scribbling furiously away at that notebook of hers, spinning her tales of Plumeria and Sir Magnifico.

It was a far cry from a Sir Magnifico to a weathered old East India Company army officer with a handful of children and only a small competence to his name. He hadn’t much to offer her, certainly nothing so elegant as that house on Laura Place, but she didn’t strike him as a woman with a need for luxuries. She had dealt with that primitive room in the inn in Bristol like a seasoned soldier, making the best of what they had.

A sudden jolt of the carriage shook William out of his reverie and back to his senses. When had he started thinking about—well, about honorable intentions? It was madness. He’d known her all of three weeks.

Admittedly, in those three weeks, they’d known each other rather better—in every sense of the word—than he had after a full year of courting his Maria in the accepted and acceptable way, teas and walks and chaperoned outings.

William snuck a glance at Gwen’s profile, the long line of her nose, the curve of her jaw, the surprisingly long sweep of her lashes, as black as her hair. She was all bundled up again, primly braided and buttoned, but he knew that beneath that stern exterior was a lifetime’s worth of adventure for the man brave enough to win her.

If he could talk her to a standstill first. Or kiss her into confusion.

The carriage swerved again, more violently.

Miss Wooliston turned from the window, a frown marring her fine features. “We have company.”

William twisted around to look out the tiny back window. Even through the wobbly glass, half-blocked by a trunk jolting up and down, he could make out ten riders behind them, all with hats pulled down low, coming up fast behind them. William didn’t like the looks of them.