Almost a Bride Read online

  “Indeed, Franklin, but one must honor Lord Dunston’s last requests,” she said, aware of a wash of relief. Of course Frederick had made no such request but she wasn’t about to argue with the duke’s extremely convenient fabrication.

  Franklin didn’t seem convinced and his gaze now returned to the duke, but whatever he was about to say he thought better of, and bowed instead. “Welcome to Lacey Court, your grace.” His tone was wooden.

  “Thank you, Franklin.” Then Jack added gently, “I do assure you that my position here is entirely within the bounds of the law and that no one in this house need be afraid for their livelihood. Pray convey that to your staff when you explain the situation to them.”

  Franklin bowed again, visibly relieved. “Mrs. Elliot and I will wait upon you at three o’clock, your grace.”

  Jack nodded, then set foot on the stairs behind Arabella. He placed an encouraging hand at her waist and her skin jumped at the appalling familiarity of the contact. What was he doing . . . thinking? Her doubts came rushing back and she almost ran ahead of him up to the landing at the head of the stairs. He was still following in leisurely fashion as she hurried down the corridor leading to the east wing. “Frederick’s apartments are here, your grace.” She opened the double doors at the end and then stepped back into the passage. “I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

  “After you,” he said with a courteous gesture that she should precede him.

  “I imagine you can find your own way around a bedchamber,” she stated, then wished she’d found another way of expressing herself. “If you need anything, there’s a bell by the fireplace. I’ll have your servant sent up to you with your bags.”

  “Tell me,” he said conversationally as he entered the bedchamber, “do you think your brother’s deathbed requests will be accepted by Lady Alsop and her like?”

  Arabella remained in the doorway. This was a safe topic discussed at a safe distance and her heart resumed its normal rate. “No,” she said, “but then, there’s little she can do about it except gossip, and she’s going to have a field day anyway.”

  He gave her a rather wicked smile. “But we’re going to enjoy stirring that little pot, aren’t we?”

  “I have no wish for the gossip to follow me to Cornwall,” she declared, refusing to respond to the conspiratorial smile as the conviction grew that the duke’s charm was merely a mask. He was dangerous. As dangerous as the rapier at his side. She would resist that charm as vigorously as she rejected his inappropriate familiarities.

  “Cornwall?” He sounded satisfactorily startled.

  “My mother’s family,” she said distantly. “I’ll go to them as soon as I’ve arranged matters.” She managed to sound as if it was a settled matter.

  “Sounds rather dull,” he observed, strolling around the chamber. “Wouldn’t you rather be in London? There’s plenty of excitement in Town, plenty to hone your wits on.”

  “I can hardly afford to live in London,” she pointed out. “Certainly not now.”

  “As my wife you could live anywhere you pleased and in whatever manner you chose.”

  “Thank you, but I think Cornwall will suit me better,” she declared. “The climate is better suited to the growing of orchids.”

  “You could have a hothouse in London,” he said, turning from his scrutiny of the garden beyond his window. But the doorway was empty. He shrugged, pursing his lips slightly. He hadn’t anticipated such opposition from Frederick’s sister. He’d had every reason to believe that she’d jump at his proposal whether she liked the idea or not. What other options did she have? How many women, let alone a penniless spinster, would reject the hand of a duke . . . one of the richest men in the country, to boot?

  Cornwall indeed. His lip curled. What a waste that would be. London, his London, would be the perfect foil for such an unusual woman. Somewhere where her quick wits and unconventional looks would shine to full advantage.

  What the hell was he thinking? He shook his head incredulously. Seeing Arabella Lacey shine in Society was the last thing he’d had in mind. Acquiring her was merely his means to an end, the final closing of the circle of vengeance. He had intended to wed a dull, plain spinster who would stay out of his way in rural Kent because it suited her husband and would perform her marital duties without question when it also suited him, and with luck and due diligence give him an heir. He certainly hadn’t intended to give her any particular pleasure in the arrangement and hadn’t expected to receive any from it himself, except the satisfaction of knowing that he had taken the very last possession of Frederick Lacey’s, something that only the dead man’s sister could bring him.

  So why on earth was he offering additional enticements to a proposal that she would soon see she had no choice but to accept? He had no need to offer anything.

  It was hot in the room and he flung open the casement, then shrugged out of his black velvet coat and pulled loose the lace-edged cravat at his neck before unbuckling his sword belt. He laid the rapier in its sheath carefully on the window seat and looked out across the garden to the orchards that stretched into the distance. The garden of England, they called this county, and it was certainly fertile, the trees bowed down with fruit, the fields beyond gold and green with ripening corn.

  Charlotte had loved the countryside . . . much preferred it to Town. The rolling hills of Burgundy had suited her gentle, easygoing nature, but her husband, the comte de Villefranche, had his place at the Court of Louis XVI, and Charlotte perforce had taken her own place in the household around the Queen, Marie Antoinette.

  Villefranche had ridden in the same tumbrel as the duke of Orleans when the time came to keep their appointment with Madame Guillotine, and Frederick Lacey had ensured that Charlotte followed her husband in death.

  Jack flung himself down on the bed, linking his hands behind his head. When the memories and the rage came upon him, he knew to let them run their course, otherwise the black mood kept a stranglehold and he was unable to think clearly or to act with any purpose. He closed his eyes and let the images of that hot-afternoon crowd in as he relived it, feeding his vengeance, strengthening his resolve.

  The mob were baying for blood, crowding around the tumbrels as they rattled over the cobbles to the guillotine in Place de la Bastille. The old prison itself was now a heap of rubble and the yelling throng climbed upon it to get a better view of the killings. The steady sound of the blade dropping, the sickening thud as it sliced through bone, the soft thump as the severed head dropped into the waiting basket could be heard only by those standing close to the bloodstained platform.

  Jack was in the street clothes of the sansculottes, the tricolor pinned to his cap, as he pushed his way through the press, away from the guillotine, towards the edge of the square. No one paid him any attention, no one realized that this sansculottes was an Englishman who every day came to the guillotine to mark the deaths of friends and acquaintances, to take the lists back to anxious relatives and friends in England waiting desperately for news. He was indistinguishable from the mob as he fought his way through, away from the reek of blood. At the edge of the crowd he drew breath. The air was thick with sweat, onions, stale wine, but he could no longer smell the blood.

  His gaze fell on three members of the securité standing in a knot in one corner of the square. And on the man with them, a man dressed in the height of fashion, but he was no longer immaculate—his powdered wig was askew, the lace at his wrists was torn, and his ruffled cravat had been ripped from his neck. It was easy to see why. One of the securité was holding up an emerald pin and laughing with his colleagues as they pushed and jostled the man towards the guillotine platform.

  Jack watched the scene for a minute, his expression blank, but the hilt of the small sword concealed beneath his grubby waistcoat was reassuring beneath his hand. The prisoner was an Englishman, not the usual target for the securité. But most Englishmen in Paris in these desperate times behaved with discretion, kept themselves away from the streets.
They didn’t flaunt their emeralds and silks and lace. Only a fool, an utterly arrogant fool, would expose himself to such danger. And Frederick Lacey, Earl of Dunston, was and always had been an utterly arrogant fool, and whatever business he had in Paris, he was up to no good.

  If Jack went to the rescue of the prisoner he would surely die with him, he reflected with a cold abstraction, and while there would be a certain irony to it, what virtue was to be gained by both their deaths? He took a step towards the group, and the prisoner, wild-eyed, looked straight at him. Recognition darted across his eyes. Not surprising, Jack thought. A man would always recognize one who, however well disguised, had once all but killed him.

  Dunston twisted in his captors’ hold and began babbling, waving his arm frantically. He seemed to have caught their attention, because they stopped in their forced march towards the platform and began to fire questions at the prisoner. Then, still gripping him tightly by the elbows, they turned and hustled him out of the square.

  Jack slipped quietly into a nearby alley. Whatever Dunston had said, it had achieved at least a reprieve, and he himself still had work to do elsewhere in the city.

  At dusk he returned to the Marais and the narrow alley where the wine merchant had his store. The door was locked and barred, the windows shuttered. He stood for a moment, gazing at the front of the shop, dread a cold hand on his heart, then he glanced upwards to the tiny window of the loft. It too was shuttered. A door banged on the opposite side of the alley and he spun around. An old woman in the rusty black garments of a widow stood watching him. He approached her slowly and she slid through the narrow doorway of the house. He followed her into the dim passage.

  “Madame, qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

  She twisted her gnarled hands as she told him of the securité who had come to the wine merchant’s shop, of the man with them, of how they had taken everyone away. Including the woman.

  Jack opened his eyes again as the scenes faded and the reek of blood, such a strong memory it was almost palpable, receded. But he could still feel the cold dread that had gripped him as he looked up at the shuttered windows of the attic in the Marais.

  He had been so close to getting Charlotte out of Paris. Two more days and the Cornish fishing boat would have arrived on the wild, rocky coast of Brittany. All was in place for their escape from Paris, they had only to wait one more day.

  While they waited, they were safest in the center of the vipers’ nest, living in the little attic above the wine merchant’s store in the heart of the Marais, to all appearances merely Citoyen and Citoyenne Franche, loyal sansculottes, active members of the people’s revolution, as eager as any to dance around the tumbrels, jeering at the aristos riding with their hands bound, the women in nothing but their shifts, the men with their shirts open, baring the neck to the blade’s path.

  And then on that last afternoon of waiting, while Jack was out gathering information about the identities of the latest purge of prisoners in the Chatelet, the securité had come to the wine merchant’s shop. They knew whom they wanted and where to find her. When Jack returned, Charlotte was gone. He had tracked her to the prison of La Force, but that same dreadful September night the guards had turned on their prisoners and massacred them. The courtyard, piled high with the mutilated, raped bodies of the slain, ran with blood.

  Jack fought to push from him the scene that was burned forever on his internal vision. Frantically he had searched for Charlotte’s body amid the carnage, ever more desperately calling her name, until an old crone, one of the tricoteuse who reveled in the daily slaughter, had told him with undisguised delight about the woman with the startling lock of white hair who had been one of the first dragged from the prison to her death beneath the knives of the prison guards.

  Jack would have killed the woman with his own knife if his friends, at great risk to themselves, had not dragged him away. He had little memory of his escape from Paris, the cross-country journey, the fishing boat that had delivered him to the shores of Cornwall. But he knew who had betrayed Charlotte to the securité. Frederick Lacey. Lacey had saved his own skin at the expense of Charlotte’s, and in doing so had avenged the long-ago dishonor Jack had inflicted upon him.

  But Lacey had paid the price. All but one thing that he had owned now belonged to his enemy. Lacey had taken Charlotte’s life, and deprived Jack of a beloved sister. Jack would acquire Lacey’s sister and she would bring him the one remaining thing he wanted to complete her half brother’s destruction. Frederick Lacey would be turning on a spit in hell, but all hell’s fires and fury would be as nothing to the knowledge of his total annihilation at the hands of the man he had loathed for the better part of his miserable existence on earth.

  As always, the prospect gave Jack a savage satisfaction. Arabella Lacey was not what he had expected, but how could he possibly have guessed that the reclusive, countrified spinster would be so bold and confident, so sure of herself? So combative. Not that it made any difference. He would marry her one way or another.

  He was a patient man when it suited his purposes.

  Chapter 3

  So, that’s the situation,” Arabella finished, offering her steward and housekeeper a smile that she hoped was encouraging.

  “Begging your pardon, m’lady, but it just doesn’t seem right. I can’t quite get my head around it,” Mrs. Elliot said. “It’s so sudden like, losing his lordship just like that. I mean, he was quite a young man, really.” She sniffed a little. “Of course, living a life like . . . well, it’s not my place to say.” She glanced significantly at Franklin, who nodded.

  Arabella decided not to respond to this. Her brother’s violent and untimely death would be the main topic of conversation and speculation in the servants’ quarters for weeks, if not months, to come.

  Firmly, she returned the subject to the present situation. “His grace has said that he will make no significant changes in the composition of the household, so no one should be afraid for their jobs.”

  “But there are bound to be changes, madam,” Mrs. Elliot declared, dusting her hands on her crisply starched apron. “Stands to reason.”

  Arabella sighed. “Yes, I’m sure there will be, but I’ll be surprised if the duke spends much time in the country. I suspect London is more to his taste. It’s possible you’ll see very little of him.”

  “Aye, a fine gentleman he is an’ all,” the housekeeper said. “Almost as fine as that man of his.” She sniffed again. “Causing all sorts of trouble and bother, he is, with his fancy ways. His grace must have this, and that must be just so, and that’s not what his grace is used to . . . I don’t know as how I’ll stand it. Isn’t that so, Mr. Franklin?”

  “It is so, Mrs. Elliot,” the steward agreed as gloomily. “A new broom, that’s for sure.”

  Arabella swallowed another sigh. She had always encouraged an easy, open relationship with the domestic staff, much to the disapproval of her brother, but it had suited her own nature. However, she wasn’t really in the mood to hear them air their grievances at present. She had enough troubles of her own.

  “Well, I’m sure things will settle down in the end,” she offered. “And as I said, I don’t imagine his grace will stay in the country for very long and I’m sure he’ll take his servants with him when he leaves.”

  “But what about you, my lady?” the housekeeper asked. “Where will you be going?”

  “I’m not sure as yet,” Arabella said. “I imagine I’ll go to my relatives in Cornwall. But it’ll take a little while to arrange and the duke has very kindly said I might remain here until I’ve sorted things out.”

  Mrs. Elliot shook her head. “Don’t seem proper, m’lady, begging your pardon. But for an unmarried lady . . .” She shook her head again. “Can’t think what Lord Dunston was thinking of . . . not making provision . . .” Flustered, she caught herself and let the sentence trail away. It was not her place to question the actions of her employers.

  Arabella let it go. She said brusquely, �
��The duke and I will lead quite separate lives. I shall keep to my own apartments in my own wing. You will, of course, serve his grace’s meals in the dining room, but I will take mine here in my parlor. From now on you’ll take your orders from his grace and refer any visitors directly to him as the master of the house. He’ll explain the situation for himself. Oh, except for my own friends,” she added. “If Miss Barratt should call, for instance, Franklin, there will be no need to disturb the duke.”

  “Quite so, madam.” Franklin’s bow managed to convey his displeasure at being reminded of such an obvious fact.

  Arabella stood up, bringing the interview to an end. “If there are no more questions . . . ?”

  “I don’t believe so, madam,” the steward said with another bow. The housekeeper curtsied and they both backed towards the door, closing it behind them.

  Well, that was over and done with, Arabella thought with relief. She’d been as businesslike and matter-of-fact as she could manage but it was all too easy to imagine the dismay belowstairs at this abrupt change of ownership. It would be the same among the tenant farmers. Everyone on the estate was dependent on the goodwill and generosity of the owner of Lacey Court. Vagaries of temperament could make their lives unlivable. Frederick had been a neglectful master, uninterested in the welfare of his tenants or indeed in anything to do with the estate except in terms of the income it provided him, but Peter Bailey was a more than able agent and administrator and Arabella saw to the more pastoral aspects of estate management. She could only hope Jack Fortescu would recognize Peter’s value and keep him on. But he might well prefer to put his own man into such a vital position.

  Just thinking about it all made her head ache. This day seemed to be sixty hours long. She sat down at her lacquered oak writing table and drew a sheet of parchment towards her. How did one begin a begging letter to relatives one barely knew? Particularly when one wasn’t begging for something as innocuous as a small loan or a bed for the night. A permanent home was a monstrous request.