“It’s so cold,” Desirée said as Adam lifted her down from the coach to the yard at the inn where they were to meet Ross and Finch before going to the rooming house.
He reached back inside for a fur throw and this he wrapped around her. “I should have taken more care about what you brought to wear,” he said. In fact it had never crossed his mind to think about her clothes at all.
“Is that better?” he asked. This was one more sign of the difference between caring only for oneself, and having another to consider.
“I am wonderful,” she told him and he looked down into her brilliant smile. “Wonderful. So much excitement. So much happiness.”
And all so fleeting. “Yes,” he said and found it impossible not to smile back at her, and to drop a kiss on her nose. She had wound her hair up again and replaced her bonnet. He put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “You sparkle, lovely one.”
“I know.” Her voice was warm and naughty, and filled with good humor. “I sparkle and shine and I know it. And you, sir, are the most sparkle and shine-making man on earth. There. We are both very perceptive people.”
The hour was about three in the morning and the activity slow enough to allow post boys and relief drivers for the Mail to sit around drinking and laughing. Ripe-scented steam rose through the inn lights, and jingling tack vied for attention with the scrape of hoofs.
Edward busied himself tending his own horses and Adam eyed the man, knowing how exhausted he must be, but Edward was of a hardy breed and moved efficiently. Tobacco smoke and the smell of strong beer splashed on straw-strewn cobbles tickled the nose. Adam held Desirée close and kept a watchful eye on all comers and goers, looking for Ross, Viscount Kilrood and his wife. It seemed a long time since Finch had lived at 7A with her brother Latimer, but Adam did not forget the open, caring woman he’d known since they met in Mayfair Square.
“Verbeux said he would never be far away,” Desirée said. “Do you suppose he’s here now?”
“Yes,” Adam said. “But I won’t waste energy looking for him. There is a man who won’t be found unless he wants to be found. Ah, I think I see a Kilrood coach.”
Adam’s stomach clenched. He did indeed see Ross’s Coat of Arms on the door of a gleaming coach that swept into the yard. Two coachmen rode the box and at the rear, where the tigers might have been, two more men stood back to back with pistols at the ready.
The precautions pleased Adam.
Desirée let out a frightened, “Oh,” and huddled close enough to slide her arms around his waist.
“Ross is a man of the world,” Adam told her. “He is traveling with his wife and you know what she means to him. He takes no risks.” Any more than I shall take risks with you.
“I have been privileged to see some wonderful love affairs—of the enduring kind,” Desirée said. “My brother was an unapproachable man before Meg came into his life and now he is a completely happy man—except when he has to deal with me. Sibyl and Hunter—a difficult path to bliss but an inevitable one, and I hear Latimer More used to be likened to an absentminded professor before Jenny. He also had quite the reputation, you know.” She made sure he couldn’t see her face. “Sought after by adventurous ladies, as was, of all people, Sir Hunter Lloyd. And look at them all now.”
Amused and a trifle abashed, Adam said, “Indeed,” while he considered his own less than lily-white past. She was right, though, it was amazing how love could change men, and women, he supposed.
“There’s Ross.” Desirée squealed and left Adam’s side to trot over the cobbles. Adam followed more slowly.
A solidly mature figure, no hat, light playing on his dark hair, Ross reached to help Finch get down and, before that lady’s feet touched the ground, Desirée hugged her and Adam heard her lapse into French at which Finch laughed and said, “Ah, ah, ah, you know what Meg would say. English, remember.”
They laughed together. When the Princess was seventeen and a sullen girl about to make her Season, she had tormented Meg, who was then her companion and tutor, by pretending she spoke no English. The episode became a joke.
Finch, a diminutive woman with hair so red it glinted, embraced Desirée and made angry faces at Ross over her shoulder.
The Viscount stood a few feet distant, his arms crossed and his chin set high. Not a happy man. Adam tossed the throw back inside the coach and made his way to join Desirée and the Kilroods.
Finch saw him coming and cried, “Adam,” before launching herself at him. “The world is a very strange place that we should meet here like this—and for such a reason.”
He held her hands and said, loudly enough for Ross to hear, “Indeed. And a serious reason not arrived at lightly.”
“Let’s get inside,” Ross said, extending a hand to Finch who joined him at once. “We are all hungry. I’ve arranged a private room where we can talk.”
Desirée joined Adam, her face anxious. “I thought we were to go and change before the ceremony,” she said.
“So did I,” Adam said, scarcely parting his lips. “Leave everything to me.”
“I love them,” she said, “but they cannot change my mind about what we intend to do here.”
Adam marked her words and entered the Three Thistles by the door Ross and Finch had taken. These two waited for them inside, with an obsequious landlord hovering. As soon as Ross gave him the word, he showed them to a small, warm room where a fire burned bright. A table had been set and there were pewter plates piled high with bread and jugs of beer waited. Butter glistened in a heaped dish.
The landlord seated them and asked the ladies if they’d care for a little mulled wine. Both accepted.
Uneasiness clawed at Adam. Ross had yet to say a word to him directly.
“I feel so dirty,” Desirée said. “The journey was long. I thought we were to go to a rooming house where we could change.”
Finch patted the Princess’s hand. “Plenty of time for that later. Ross…we decided it would be best to talk together first.”
The arrival of a serving girl with a creaking board of cheese and slabs of cold beef gave Adam time to prepare himself for the worst. He didn’t want Desirée put through a bad time, though.
“Look,” Ross said. “Might as well get straight to the point. I don’t think that your plan is wise.”
Desirée pinched her lips together and Adam saw how upset she was. He feared he might use a fist imprudently and set about putting cheese on a dark piece of bread instead.
Ross pushed his own plate away. “Jean-Marc is my very close friend. We don’t have secrets from each other.”
“Oh dear,” Finch said quietly.
“A good friend is a fine thing,” Adam said, unable now to look away from Desirée. Her hands were clasped on the edge of the table and she concentrated on them, when she wasn’t concentrating on him so hard he felt she was trying to make him read her thoughts.
Ross coughed. “After hearing the true reason for the marriage—in a letter from Jean-Marc’s man, Verbeux—I have devised an alternate plan, which should satisfy all of us.”
“We should all eat first,” Finch said. In better light, the pale brown of her eyes and the fact that her eyelashes were as red as her hair, showed clearly.
“How are the children?” Desirée asked, her complexion ashen now. “And Oswin.”
“Well,” Finch said, “all of them. I actually believe Oswin is becoming fat!”
Oswin was the dog who belonged to Hayden, the boy Ross and Finch had rescued from the backstreets of London and adopted.
All four of them grew silent.
“The point is to make people believe you are married and that it is perfectly in order for you to be, er, intimate. That is, not exactly intimate but living in the same quarters. Not that it won’t be assumed that you are intimate. It will require some careful politics to change that opinion, but as long as what we say is the truth, patience will be our shield.”
Rather than fill with tears, as Adam would have expected, Desirée’s eyes glittered with anger.
Adam waited until Ross continued. “I will go this far. I will tell Jean-Marc that you are married so that he will not try to stop you from being together, but you don’t have to actually get married. Then, when the trouble passes, and if you decide you do really want to be husband and wife, try to get Jean-Marc to agree. He would be demolished if he were not to see you married before God.”
Desirée had tried to pick up her wine but her hand shook so badly she slopped red stains onto the cloth. She looked at Adam with such misery that he longed more than ever to land a fist in Ross’s face.
“It’s no good,” Finch said abruptly, her voice high. “We cannot interfere with love, my dear, and these two are in love. Can’t you see that?”
“They have no right,” Ross mumbled.
“Every right,” Finch said and sounded beside herself.
Ross stood. “May I have a quiet word with you, Chillworth?”
If this was going to get nasty, Adam would prefer to shelter the women. “Certainly,” he told Ross and got up to follow the other man outside the door.
Finch felt positively light-headed. Her husband’s honor shaded every move he made. A staunch friend, he never betrayed friendship, and she knew he was unlikely to be swayed by someone he considered an enemy to one of his friends.
“Finch,” Desirée said in an alarmingly small voice. “What is Ross saying to Adam out there?”
“I don’t know,” Finch said honestly. “I can guess that he is trying to make Adam see his point of view, but I may be wrong.”
“You love the Viscount. You have loved him for years.”
“Yes.” Finch felt a welcome rush of warmth at the thought.
“He has a beautiful heart, Finch, and seeks always to do the right thing. Unfortunately he is only a man and sometimes he’s horribly wrong.” She smiled a little and was grateful when Finch did the same thing.
“I want to be married to Adam. We have decided that whatever we can have together, for however long, is worth any sacrifice. And we need each other as we never have before. We have both suffered vicious attacks, Finch—when we were alone. And we know these things are because someone is desperate to keep us apart. Two reasons come to my mind. I was warned to stay away from Adam and it could be because someone has designs on marrying me himself. Or Adam could be a danger to someone who has decided to kill him. For us to be together does not suit them, so—” she turned up her palms “—once we are wed it will be too late for the villains. It only makes sense for us to be together all the time, don’t you think?”
Finch thought that she was looking at a woman so in love she would concoct any reason to be with Adam.
“I should do for you what your mother won’t,” Finch said hurriedly. “First, please be truthful and tell me if you have…are you still…do you?”
Desirée chuckled. “You didn’t used to be so shy,” she said.
“Don’t play with me, young lady.” Finch shook a finger at Desirée and found the courage to say, “Have you and Adam already been intimate?”
“Oh,” Finch said, and felt a little disappointed for the pair of them. She cleared her throat. “Well, that’s very honorable of you. Now listen carefully. I’ll get through as quickly as I can.
“The days and weeks before the marriage are the best part of the whole thing because the man is more attentive than he will ever be once you are formally his and he doesn’t have to pretend he dwells on your every word anymore.”
Desirée frowned and pursed her lips.
“It is important to try to set some standards whilst courting. The only way a marriage truly works is for the woman to have the upper hand.”
“Absolutely,” Desirée said with gusto and promptly pressed her lips together again.
“The woman decides the pace of the relationship, what she expects from the man who is to be her husband,” Finch said. “She lets him know that a peaceful household, their peaceful household cannot be built around a man who reads the newspaper at every meal where there are no guests. Harmony is not reached by forgetting the subtle art of conversation. When a lady asks her husband, ‘Do you like my gown,’ he may not say, ‘Humph, or yes, or very much,’ without looking at the gown. He is to learn the enjoyment of his own children. This means he will hold them, play with them, and allow them to sleep upon his chest—regularly. They will consider him a friend, as well as a firm disciplinarian and a protector.” Finch ran out of breath.
“Bravo,” Desirée said, clapping her hands. “Most excellent.”
“Thank you.”
“You have a very clear and clever mind,” Desirée remarked.
“Hmm.” Finch knew she had arrived at The Subject, that which she must not botch if she were to help the Princess as much as possible. “Conjugal bliss. If courting is crowning bliss, the wedding night is hell. Oh, sorry for that. I got a little passionate.”
Princess Desirée looked at her with bright, inquisitive eyes. “Was your wedding night hell?”
Finch recalled her own somewhat unconventional courtship—and an interlude on a bench in Ross’s museum. Determinedly she turned her mind to her wedding night. “Not hell, dear one, heaven. It was such heaven.”
“And yet you warn me of the dangers.”
“All men are not Ross.” She refused to admit that the lovemaking she shared with her husband was a wild and drugging thing, or that their trysts were not confined either to the night, or to the bedroom. “It is quite the routine for a bridegroom to enter his new wife’s chamber, to order her into bed, where he joins her—dressed in his nightshirt, of course—and to perform his husbandly duties in a manner intended to obtain only his own satisfaction. Then the tendency is for the oaf to leave without as much as a kiss or a word of endearment. Well, my dear, that is just not on.”
Desirée appeared to digest what Finch had said. Then she said, “Rather like a horse in a night rail.”
Finch felt her mouth fall open.
“Well, if a man tried to do that to me, I should reward him with terrible surprises.”
“What terrible surprises?” Finch found Desirée’s spirit irresistible.
“I should bite him. Hard,” Desirée said.
Finch looked for men’s shadows near the glass windows in the door but saw none. She whispered, “Where?”
“In bed, I should think.”
“No, no, I mean what would you bite? His ear?”
Desirée let out a long sigh and said, “Why, I would bite him there of course. Right on the Pinnacle of his Pride.”
“Desirée.” Finch held her stomach and laughed aloud. “You would do no such thing. For all you know you might manage to inflame the creature’s passion even further and he would set upon you. He could be so out of control that he would hurt you with his violent assault.”
“You mean he might like what I’d done,” Desirée said. “It might turn him into a sexual animal. A horse—have you ever seen the size of a horse’s—”
“Yes, and I don’t want to discuss that now. I am trying to guide you and it isn’t easy as long as you can’t keep your mind off horses.”
“Was Ross ever an animal with you.”
“Good heavens, no, Desirée.”
“Do you enjoy it when he comes to you—or perhaps when you go to him?”
This was not at all the way the discussion should have gone. “I enjoy being with Ross.”
“Do you imagine that Adam would all but attack me—with a nightshirt on—and not bother to as much as kiss me?”
“Of course not. Adam is gentle.”
“He is rather large, though,” Desirée said with a thoughtful expression on her face. “He could have his way with me if he wanted to.”
“He would never do such a thing,” Finch insisted.
“What if I got carried away and bit him—just for fun. Would he punish me for it?”
“I rather think he might make you pay, but you would each get equal pleasure out of the price.”
“So why should I be worried about my wedding night?”
Finch stared at Desirée and realized the girl had neatly bamboozled her into defending Adam and what his behavior was likely to be once they were married. “You are well able to care for yourself,” Finch told the girl. “And I’m going to do my best to make sure this wedding takes place.”