ELISE GOT THROUGH THE following day without a single jingle from Lord Lavay, who had closeted himself with the Earl of Ardmay for the afternoon. In all likelihood, something to do with that message brought last night. Something about it struck her as ominous, as portentous as the great lingering masses of rain clouds now hovering between the kitchen door and the vicarage.
Those clouds would likely contribute to a magnificent sunset, given half a chance, if the rain didn’t fall.
She stood on the steps outside the kitchen door, her eyes aimed, as usual, toward the vicarage like a hunting dog’s. She would not exhale until she saw the two figures, small as birds on the green in the distance at first.
They increased in size.
When they came into view as people rather than dark specks, her heart launched heavenward.
And when he saw her, Jack began to run, and Seamus, bless him, did again, too, to try to keep up.
“We know you like these, Mama, so we brought more,” Jack huffed.
Jack had a fistful of daisies and some roses that had once sported considerably more petals, but which had been balded on the trip from the vicarage to home.
Seamus gave him a nudge.
“It was Seamus’s idea.”
“Was it now? Thank you, Mr. Duggan. Thank you, Jack. ”
“I’m going to be a sheep, Mama!”
“When you grow up? Instead of a bell ringer?”
“In the Christmas pantomime. Baaaaaa! Baaaaaa!”
He bent over and waggled his hindquarters.
“Very convincing. Excellent casting decision on the part of . . .”
“Mrs. Sneath.” Seamus’s face darkened, and his voice deepened as if he’d said Beelzebub.
Elise knew Mrs. Sneath. She was the redoubtable head of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor, and she worked closely with the vicar. She was the sort of woman who would never let the Seamus Duggans of the world get away with anything, let alone get near all the dewy young women who volunteered for charity work.
And Mrs. Sneath was an accomplisher. If something needed to be done, she would make sure it was.
And . . . a pantomime would need costumes.
Hope and inspiration violently surged through Elise.
“There will be girls, too, Mama! The younger girls from Miss Endicott’s will be in it. They will be angels.”
“I wondered if I might have a word with Mr. Duggan while you run upstairs, Jack.” She said it in such a rush that Seamus’s eyes went wide. “Go and tell Kitty and Mary and James and Ramsey about your day. They would love to hear about the sheep and angels.”
Nearly the entire staff had fallen in love with Jack. Kitty and Mary treated him like a favorite pet, and James and Ramsey were jocular and silly with him. Jack gave Dolly a wide berth, however, with that instinct children and animals have for something that might not be quite right.
“All right, Mama. Are there tarts in the kitchen?”
“Yes, but no tarts before din—”
He was already off like a shot.
She whirled back to Seamus. “Forgive me for being brief, Mr. Duggan—”
“ . . . as I’ve said to more than one young lady.”
She blinked. Good heavens, he was incorrigible. She recovered with aplomb.
“—but will the ladies of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor be sewing costumes for the pantomime?”
“Yes. Sheep, shepherds, and the like. A baby Jesus. Angel dresses. The reverend got hold of some music he’d like me to play. Singing and the like. A few hymns, ‘While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks at Night.’ Like that.”
“I’m in a bit of a pickle, Mr. Duggan. I need two footman uniforms. Coats, waistcoats, stockings, the works, on down to the shoes. Inside a fortnight. Well before Boxing Day.”
This gave Seamus a moment’s pause.
“Well, now, the baby Jesus was special indeed,” he said gently, “but I don’t think even he had footmen, Mrs. Fountain.”
“What are the wise men if not . . . holy footmen, of a sort?”
Seamus tilted his head. “Ah, ye poor lass. Ye really are in a pickle if ye’re spouting nonsense like that.”
“The wise men are kings! And kings have footmen!” She blurted it. Divine inspiration, that.
Seamus liked it. “Now you’ve given me a bit more to work with.”
“They have to be midnight blue. Trimmed in silver.”
“You don’t want much, do you, Mrs. Fountain?”
“And stockings. Silk stockings.”
“Shoes?”
Seamus was clearly thinking now.
“And shoes.”
“If I could persuade the ladies of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor to add footmen to the Christmas pantomime, I’ll need something in return from you, Mrs. Fountain, and it won’t be apple tarts.”
Oh, God.
“Come to the Pig & Thistle on your next two evenings off,” he added swiftly.
“Is that all?”
He gave a short laugh. “It should be enough,” he said confidently. “Disappointed, dove?” He winked. “The pleasure of pulling one over on Mrs. Sneath is more than enough reward. If I can manage it.”
INSURRECTION WAS ALLEGEDLY afoot.
The Crown’s messenger had brought to Lavay a few curt lines scrawled on foolscap, a date, a meeting place, the names of men whom he needed to meet and track, the names of people with whom he would work, men he knew, including the Earl of Ardmay.
It was, of course, dangerous. He was to infiltrate their ranks by positioning himself as a French national still bitter about the outcome of the war.
That much wouldn’t prove too much of a challenge.
And the money . . . oh, the money they offered would solve nearly everything.
The trouble was Lavay knew he was currently in no way physically equipped to do it. He had his vanity, but he was no fool, and he would never endanger the men with whom he worked.
He had a month to decide.
And this decision essentially stood between him and everything he wanted.
The Earl of Ardmay had received a similar message, and they had talked it through yesterday, while reminiscing about some past adventures and skirting the true conversation they needed to have: whether or not they would accept the assignment.
Or whether Philippe would do it without the earl.
Because Philippe’s intuition told him that his friend was reluctant, despite the rewards promised, because of his wife and baby. There was just too much to lose now. Having lost nearly everything he loved, Philippe would never blame him.
He absently flexed his hand, which was still stiff, as was much of the rest of his body, though the willow bark tea did help. This did nothing for his temper.
And perhaps because he was feeling masochistic, he fished about in his stack of correspondence and slit open Marie-Helene’s most recent letter.
And his internal barometer shot upward.
Almost as a reflex now, he rang the bell violently.
And when Mrs. Fountain arrived, for a moment he just looked dumbly at her, his mood elevating already, as if she were a shot of brandy.
Her dresses were all simple and somber, and though they fit beautifully, they were clearly designed with economy in mind. She ought to wear more colors. Vivid ones. Deep ones. Soft fabrics that draped the lines of her and moved like liquid, because she was lithe. He wondered how she might look in a ball gown. Or if she’d ever worn a ball gown.
“Red,” he muttered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I . . . er, that is, I’d like you to help me with a response to a letter.”
She paused and studied him. “Would you like me to throw the vase for you, sir?”
His mouth quirked at the corner. “If you would be so kind.”
She picked it up and quite deliberately and gently placed it at the far end of the mantel, well out of his reach.
“Excellent aim,” he said dryly.
“Thank you.”
“The letter is in response to my sister,” he explained tautly.
“Ah,” she said.
The pure understanding in that syllable was balm.
She settled into the brown chair, and he watched her, amused, as she slid back into it with a suppressed sigh. Mrs. Fountain was a sensual creature.
It took one to know one.
He began almost before she could pick up the quill.
“Dearest Marie-Helene. Whilst my fondest wish is that you will rot in hell—”
“Dearest Marie-Helene,” she repeated firmly as she wrote, “I hope this letter finds you enjoying continued good health and happiness.”
“—with regards to your latest request for money to supplement the gowns from last season, I am pleased to tell you where to stuff it.”
“With regards to your latest request for money, I request your patience and economy, and would beg you to recall that you look beautiful in everything and to hold your head high always and remember your lineage.
And as to your inquiry about the reasons I am dawdling in Sussex, it is hardly your concern how or where I spend my time.
And as to your inquiry regarding the reasons I am dawdling in Sussex, I thank you for your concern and assure you we will meet again soon . . .”
She stopped writing and looked up at him limpidly.
He glared blackly at her.
“Is that what you meant to say, sir?”
“Yes. Damn you, Mrs. Fountain.”
He leaned over and slipped the quill from her fingers and scrawled his name at the bottom. As if he were done with Marie-Helene forever.
And then he sighed a long-suffering sigh.
“Lord Lavay . . .”
“Are you about to ask a question, Madame Je-sais-tout?” he said testily. “And here I thought you knew everything.”
She didn’t even blink. “Does Marie-Helene know you were . . . shall we say accosted . . . in London? And that you are in Sussex because you are recovering?”
“Of course not,” he said dismissively.
“Why not?”
“My responsibility to Marie-Helene is twofold, Mrs. Fountain: to protect her from such ugly realities, and to ensure she is equipped to make a magnificent marriage and never want for a thing.”
Something wistful and lovely flickered over Mrs. Fountain’s face, a surge of emotion he couldn’t quite identify, but on the whole, women as a species were irritating him at the moment.
“Wasn’t the revolution one long ugly reality?” she asked.
This brought him up short.
“Yes,” he said curtly, after a moment.
She paused, thoughtfully, plucking up the quill again and tapping the feather end of it against her lips.
White quill against those red lips. Mesmerizing.
“Did Marie-Helene not lose a father and a brother, too? And perhaps friends and other relatives?”
He narrowed his eyes at her again.
And then at last he heaved a long, long sigh and swiped his hands down his face.
“That is why,” he said wearily, “I don’t want her to know what happened to me. She has been through enough. And watching her experience the other things . . . when I could not stop them, or protect her from them . . .”
They regarded each other wordlessly.
What have you been through, Mrs. Fountain, to understand such things? he wanted to ask then.
“Whereas you have been frolicking in meadows for the past decade,” she pointed out.
“It is my responsibility, Mrs. Fountain,” he said again, slowly, as if she was an idiot child. “What I’ve been doing to uphold them is none of her concern, either.”
“Have you considered she might be concerned about you? That her tone may be anxious because she misses you? And perhaps she is stronger than you know?”
“Pah,” he shrugged with one shoulder. “She is a young girl. She is spoiled, and should remain so.”
But he was less angry now.
He hadn’t told a soul any of this before, and something in the mere articulation of it lightened him, as if one more layer of weight had been lifted from his chest, freeing his breathing.
“How old is she?” Mrs. Fountain pressed.
“Eighteen.”
“A grown woman.”
“A grown woman who ought to be married by now, but for a dowry befitting her family name. And her dowry is my responsibility. I will not see my sister a spinster, or married to someone below her station.”
His voice escalated until that last word echoed in the room.
The unspoken, throbbing word, of course, was that Mrs. Fountain was well below their station.
But there was nothing English people understood better than “station.”
“She is old enough to make a few decisions of her own,” Elise pressed gently.
“She has not been raised to ‘make decisions,’ Mrs. Fountain.” He said this dryly.
“If she is anything like you . . .”
He straightened to his full height.
And gave a humorless laugh. “Even you may not be rash enough to finish that sentence,” he warned grimly.
Her spine straightened and her chin went up. “ . . . if she is anything like you, she is a survivor,” Mrs. Fountain said. “May I just say this? Women are often more resilient than men credit us with. And often much stronger than you know. And that is all I will say.”
“For now,” Philippe said grimly.
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. She was clearly trying not to laugh. The cheek of her.
He studied her a moment in silence. “Do you perhaps speak from experience, Mrs. Fountain?”
She simply regarded him evenly. Which was answer enough.
He paced again.
And then he turned and began haltingly. Because for some reason he wanted her to know.
“I am not angry at her. I am angry at myself. I am angry at fate. I am angry at this”—he thrust his healing hand into the air—“and I am angry at the limbo that prevents me from earning the money I need to buy back my own home and provide my sister with a dowry and every bloody ball gown her heart desires. I am angry that my family was smashed to smithereens by revolution and I am left to pick up the pieces. The best cure for anger is constructive action, Mrs. Fountain. The time is ticking away from me. I can marry well and swiftly, or I can accept another assignment from the crown, or I can, feasibly, do both. But I need to decide which it will be before the winter is over, because Les Pierres d’Argent will be sold out from under me if I do not.”
She took this impassioned speech in.
“So . . . you can hurl yourself back into danger because that is lucrative, or you can . . .”
“Hurl myself into matrimony.”
It was another word that seemed to ring portentously. More like a tolling, really, than a joyous ring of the church bell, as accomplished by two small boys, one dangling from the other.
“Was that why the king’s messenger was here?”
“Yes. The Crown has . . . work for me.”
“And by work, I suppose you mean something involving weapons.”
“I’m prized for my charm, as well, Mrs. Fountain. And my skill with languages.”
“None of which would mean a thing to His Majesty’s men if you did not also know how to wield a sword. I expect you’re wanted to do something dangerous again.”
To her surprise and his, he smiled. She was so tart and astute and bracing. “Oh, you better not get in the way of the powerful Lord Philippe Lavay . . .” he sang softly, teasing her. “Ah, I long for the days when my charm was all that was necessary to keep a roof over my head.”
It ought to have made her smile.
But she was studying him thoughtfully, and something darkened her expression.
She was clearly deciding whether to speak.
He sighed. “Say what you wish to say, Mrs. Fountain,” he ordered.
“Where . . . precisely does it hurt? Besides your hand?” she ventured.
His eyebrows shot up.
“I’m sorry . . . is that too indelicate a question?”
“Is ‘everywhere’ too indelicate an answer?”
“Is it true? I’m terribly sorry if it is.”
“Thank you,” he said finally. Simply.
Because it was so very clear that she meant it. There was nothing accusatory or fawning or hysterical in her.
He held up his hand in a silent gesture. “Here is what is troubling me the most, as you know. Or rather, it’s the most inconvenient.”
“May I . . . see it? As I said, I am a doctor’s daughter. I know a thing or two about injuries.”
“Are you trying to make me battle worthy in order to save me from matrimony, Mrs. Fountain?”
He realized his breath was held while he waited for her glib answer.
Something flickered in her eyes then. It was like watching clouds rush across the face of the sun.
“I think both conditions will require the use of your hands, Lord Lavay.”
He laughed, surprised. And thoroughly delighted.
And he settled into the chair opposite her and extended his hand as though she were a gypsy reader who could read his future in it.
She took it with grave gentleness and a bit gingerly, as if it were a sleeping baby hedgehog and not a hand.
She studied it for a moment, so seriously it made him smile.
What a luxury it was to surrender himself to someone for a moment. Her hands were soft and cool, but not the silky, tended kinds of hands his female relatives and all the beautiful women with whom he’d danced or made love possessed. It was a hand you could trust with precious things, with serious things.
It had been so long since a beautiful woman had simply touched his hand. Without wanting or expecting a thing.
This realization surprised him, too. It wasn’t an entirely comfortable conclusion, and he wasn’t certain every man would reach it. It was more of an intangible thing. Some magical formula comprised of the lovely softness and angles of her features, combined with the way she moved, the way her skin took the light, the depthless eyes that lit like stars when she smiled, that crackling wit she wielded so very strategically, the things she hid.
It occurred to him that surely whatever his hand had to reveal should have been revealed by now.
But she hadn’t relinquished it.
And suddenly the air around them seemed close and velvety, as if they were beneath a dome, separate from the rest of the world.
A peculiar peace stole over him. He could not recall ever experiencing a similar sensation.
He wouldn’t know what to call it. Perhaps “rightness.”
“Who stitched the wound?” Her voice was a hush, too, as if his hand was a patient who was resting, and they both ought not disturb it.
“A . . . I shall describe him as a samaritan . . . who fortuitously happened to be at the same place I was at and came to my assistance. And I was then given into the care of someone who was, rightly so, more concerned about me bleeding to death than the aesthetic appeal of my hand. There was a good deal of me to attend to, you see. Cut open and so forth.”
“You do say such things so casually. ‘Bleeding to death,’ ” she quoted dryly.
“Do you wish I wouldn’t?”
She shrugged with one shoulder, which amused him. It was contagious, apparently.
“They nearly gutted me like a fish. But I am quick like a cat, so I rolled before they had my liver on the tip of a sword, like a pickle on a fork.”
Her head shot up again and she stared at him in wondering horror.
He grinned like a naughty boy. “Consider it a test of your fortitude, Mrs. Fountain, and your ingenuity—how not to blanch when I say such things. Though it is gratifying to know my survival is of interest to you.”
She dropped her gaze immediately.
He realized he kept saying these things to see how she would respond.
There was naught but silence for a few minutes.
“Part of what is troubling you is that you should have had more stitches, and stitches that were closer together. Like . . . lettering on an embroidered pillow. It would allow for freer movement of your hand.”
“What would you embroider upon me, Mrs. Fountain?”
“Caveat emptor,” she said, sounding entirely serious.
He laughed.
He thought perhaps he would like to spend the rest of the day sitting here across from Mrs. Fountain, waiting for one of her curls to escape, while she looked up at him with those dark eyes that were three parts sympathetic, one part wary, and one part wicked, sensual humor that she tried very hard to squelch.
Because he suspected this last part comprised most of her.
This was the part he desperately wanted to tempt out of hiding.
He touched that pink slash across his cheekbone. “Given that my face is my fortune, I suppose it’s fortunate that the rest of me took the brunt.”
She quirked her mouth. If he was fishing for a compliment, he was destined for disappointment. “Where else are you injured?”
He made no move to remove his hand from the soft little cradle of hers.
She made no move to give it up.
The moment had officially shifted into something for which neither of them possessed a compass.
He gestured with his other hand. “There’s a slash from here . . .” He pointed to a space in the low center of his chest and watched her eyes follow it. “. . . to . . .” He drew his finger slowly down, down down to a spot her eyes couldn’t follow. “. . . here.”
Her gaze stopped and lingered on his chest.
Then she slowly raised her head. Their gazes met. Collided, more accurately.
He wondered if his pupils were as large as Mrs. Fountain’s pupils currently were.
“And everything gets so very . . . stiff . . . you see,” he added. Somberly.
She visibly drew in a breath.
“I know how to address the stiffness,” she said gravely.
His eyes widened. An interesting sensation had begun to trace his spine. That delicious whisper of desire that could so easily be fanned into a conflagration.
“Do you? I am all ears, Mrs. Fountain.” His voice was a hush.
She hesitated again. She bit her lip thoughtfully and leaned forward just a very little.
“Well, you first need to warm it . . .”
And then her hand came up and covered his with her other hand, making a little sandwich of it. As if it were a creature she needed to capture and release into the wild.
“ . . . to loosen the muscles around it.”
He couldn’t speak.
It was very like she’d just laid down a card in a daring wager.
“Ah,” he said softly, hearing the tautness in his voice. “Is that so?”
“Stretching it will help. In fact, you must stretch it if you’d ever like to wrap it around a sword again.”
Were those glints in her eyes actual glints, or a reflection of the lamplight?
“And as my sword is of significant length and girth, and I am a renowned swordsman, this is of grave concern to me.” He kept his voice soft and so, so serious, too. They might as well have been at a funeral.
The air was officially full of illicit sparks. A bit like the air before a thunderstorm.
“And then, once it’s warm, Lord Lavay, you need to rub it . . . like so . . . to loosen the muscles.”
She took her thumbs and pressed them into the palm of his hand, and kneaded.
Once.
Twice.
He sighed at length, a sigh he seemed to have held for years. “Mother of God, that feels good.”
She froze.
He could almost hear an inaudible shattering sound. As if some sort of spell had been broken.
“If only I had something warm to cover the rest of my poor, wounded body in order to keep it limber, Mrs. Fountain.”
Her eyes flew open in alarm.
She practically thrust his hand back at him.
He’d officially shocked her.
Or she’d shocked herself.
He wasn’t unshocked, for that matter.
His impulse was to rescue her, regardless.
“Thank you,” he said briskly. “That will help, when I had begun to think nothing would.”
“I’m glad,” she said just as briskly. “You will be able to rub it for yourself, with your other hand, and I think you will find that things improve rapidly.”
“I’ve become accustomed to rubbing it for myself with my other hand.”
She froze.
And that was when he witnessed one of the mightiest struggles he’d ever witnessed. The corner of one side of her mouth turned up, and then it seemed to drag up the other corner.
But she ducked her head before he could see the smile. She took a few deep breaths.
When she lifted it again, she was somber and composed. If considerably pinker. He had a pleasant vision of her staggering down the stairs, roaring with laughter when she reached the bottom so he wouldn’t hear.
“Shall I post the letter to your sister tomorrow, Lord Lavay?”
“Thank you, Fountain. Please do take it with you.”
She shot to her feet so quickly that she nearly tipped the brown chair.
“I’d best return to the kitchen now. I think something is burning.”
That was putting it mildly. He was tempted to say my loins, but then he might never see her again.
She was out of the room so quickly that she nearly created a wind.
He watched her go.
And he looked at the doorway long after she was gone, then gave himself a good shake when he realized what he was doing.
He frowned and looked around the room. He’d best light another lamp. The room seemed dimmer now, somehow.
He stared at his hand, gave it a flex. It felt strange somehow to have it back. Oddly, it felt as though it now belonged to her.