Anne Barbour (14 page)

Lady Chuffing pursed her small mouth in disappointment, but accepted defeat with good grace. After another few moments of chatter, she continued on her way, bestowing a significant smile on the pair as she turned away.

“My,” breathed Amanda, “I’m impressed. You skewered her right through the gizzard and she never knew it.”

“An acquired skill,” he murmured. “Would you care to step outside? It’s very warm tonight, so I think you will not need a shawl.”

Indeed, the evening was almost sultry, and several of the ladies, also promenading with their partners on the small terrace that led from the back of the house, plied their fans vigorously. The scent of spring flowers was heavy in the air, and Amanda exclaimed in delight, “One of the things I love about England are the gardens. Even here in the city, flowers can be seen around almost every home.”

“It’s our country roots, I expect. Many of those who dwell in Mayfair grew up on rural estates. At Ashindon House, in Bruton Street—well, it’s someone else’s house, now—but the garden was kept meticulously.”

Amanda glanced up at him, but his face was closed. Really, she thought, he had the most unrevealing features of any man she’d ever met. He’d make a great poker player. She turned away and moved down the stairs. The gravel on the path bit through her thin slippers and she stepped onto the grass.

“Mmm.” She bent to sniff at a small bush covered with tiny, fragrant blossoms. She turned to face the earl, only to find that he had been following her so closely that her nose bumped against the diamond stickpin in his neckcloth. She drew back hastily. “Tell me about your rural estate, my lord. Ashindon Park, is it?”

Ash smiled down at her. He was still rather too close for her peace of mind, she thought, but when she tried to move away, she found she was backed up against the little bush. His nearness was having a most peculiar and not altogether welcome effect on her.

“As I think you know, the Park is in Wiltshire. It was built in the time of Queen Elizabeth by Henry, the fifth Baron Grantham, later the first earl of Ashindon. It was erected in a plain square, but over the years it has sprawled out in all directions, so that it is more or less a hodgepodge of various styles. I have always thought it beautiful, and it holds many fond memories for me. Perhaps,” he concluded unencouragingly, “you would like to visit the Park—after our betrothal is announced. The place is not livable at present, but the dower house is still in reasonably good repair. I leased it to the vicar’s cousin last year, but the family will be leaving within a month or two.”

“I’d like that,” murmured Amanda. Would she still be here in a month or two? She was surprised at the stab of disappointment that shot through her at the thought she might not be. “And Lady Ashindon?” she asked. She did not really want to talk about Lianne, but something about Ash’s reaction to the presence of the lovely countess impelled her to ask the question, rather like probing at a sore tooth.

Ash shrugged. “She has recently arrived in London. In the country, she makes her home with her parents, whose estate marches with ours.”

“Ah, you’ve known each other for a long time.”

“Almost all our lives.” Ash faced her abruptly, and the faint glow of candlelight from the house turned his eyes to molten silver. “She and I were to be married,” he said harshly. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

She stared at him searchingly. “Are you still in love with Lianne?” she asked finally in a low voice.

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, in a sudden movement, he grasped her to him and bent his head. “I shall let you be the judge of that,” he growled just before he brought his mouth down on hers.

Chapter Ten

All in all, thought Amanda, sipping her chocolate contemplatively the morning after the ball, the evening had been interesting, to say the least. Events surfaced in her mind like dolphins displaying themselves to spectators on a ship. There was the dizzying magic of the waltz with the Earl of Ashindon, the confrontation with her supposed lover, Cosmo Satterleigh, the rather peculiar meeting with the beautiful Lady Ashindon, supper with Ash—and later that shattering kiss.

There had been nothing tender about it. His lips had ground into hers with a brutal ferocity, and his arms had enveloped her so tightly that she struggled for breath. She had been outraged at his tactics, but she had recognized almost immediately the anguish that surged within him. Instinctively, she realized that he was lashing out in pain like a wounded animal. And, if truth be told, something in her responded to the feel of his mouth on hers and the hardness of the body pressed so unrelentingly against hers.

After only a few seconds he had pulled back, an expression of appalled astonishment on his face.

“I—I’m sorry,” he rasped. “My God, Amanda, I’m sorry. I don’t know—” He had grasped her arm once more and without another word he propelled her back to the house. She had seen almost nothing of him until the end of the evening, and the ride back to Upper Brook Street with Serena and Jeremiah had been silent except for her mother’s steady stream of self-congratulatory chatter on Amanda’s success.
He had left the Bridges at the door with a strained promise to visit later in the week. As he turned to go, he looked at Amanda again as though he would have said more, but he simply bowed and wheeled out into the night.

Amanda took another sip of her chocolate. It was not as though she’d never been kissed before, although Derek had been her last lover. Since then, she had been the recipient of friendly busses from time to time, plus the occasional consolation-seeking embrace from friends who had just broken up with other friends. Even before Derek, her carnal encounters had been few and far between. It took a special sort of man to go beyond deformities of the body to reach the spirit beneath, and that kind, like they said, was hard to find.

Now, she reflected ruefully, even with her new Miss America makeover, she was still being kissed by men who loved somebody else.

For there could be no doubt that Ash was in love with the lovely Lianne. She experienced a forlorn flutter in the pit of her stomach at the thought. What had happened? she wondered. He said they had been betrothed. What had driven them apart? Surely she must have known—what was his name? Grant?—during all her growing-up time. Why had she waited until Ash had declared himself to decide she preferred the cousin? And why, for God’s sake, now that Lianne was free, was Ash mooching around Amanda Bridge?

Well, that was a pretty stupid question, wasn’t it? Obviously the widow of his impoverished cousin wouldn’t have two pennies to rub together, and Ash wanted money very badly. Wanted it more than he did his lost love, apparently.

Amanda found she was gripping the handle on her cup so tightly her knuckles had whitened. She was unwilling to contemplate whether her distress was caused by the thought of Ash’s greed or the fact that he was in love with someone besides her own gorgeous self. At the very least, she found the latter thought startling. She had always assumed that it was her flawed face and figure that had driven men away. Perhaps the flaws went deeper. Perhaps it was simply the woman beneath that was unlovable.

My God, there’s a cheerful concept to start out the day, she thought grimly. She set her cup and saucer down on the bedside table with great precision and tossed back the coverlet. She had more important things to think of right now. Like how she was to end this whole ludicrous charade. Who knew how much time was elapsing in her own life while she flitted about the social scene in Regency London? Her vacation was slipping away, and in a few days she was due back at work. Her desk would be piled high with reports to grade, her schedule filled with meetings, phone calls, and the other assorted impedimenta of academic life.

Where was Amanda McGovern right now? Lying comatose in a hospital ward somewhere? Dear God! She cried the words silently. She had to do something! She began scrambling frantically into one of the few gowns she possessed that she could don by herself. Having accomplished this, she sank dejectedly onto the little chair before her dressing table. Do what? Listlessly she drew on stockings and shoes, then rose to stare unseeingly out the window at the vendors on the street. She’d spent hours in Grosvenor Chapel, meditating furiously, with no result. She’d kept a constant eye out for the apple-cheeked little old person who was apparently her only connection with her real life, but she—and/or he—had made no more appearances. She’d tried everything but prayer and fasting, and she still awoke every morning in this fussy little bedroom with a cup of grainy hot chocolate set before her. She could have screamed with frustration—and a growing, unnamed fear.

For some moments, she continued her fruitless deliberations until, despite herself, her attention was caught by a youngster juggling apples from his mother’s cart. The boy’s back was to her, and, though he could not have been more than eight or ten years old, his skill was remarkable. He turned toward her suddenly, revealing diminutive features and a pair of tiny spectacles and— wait a minute. Spectacles on a street urchin? Yes—and cheeks like little pomegranates!

Amanda whirled and ran from the room.

Reaching the street, she expelled a sigh of relief. The kid was still there, bobbing and weaving around the can as he tossed more and more apples into the air. Flinging herself forward, she grabbed his arm with a breathless, “You! I’ve got to talk to you!”

“Now looka whatcher done!” exclaimed the boy, scrabbling after the fruit that fell to the ground around them. He turned to Amanda with a cheery smile. “Buy an apple, lady?”

“I don’t want any apples,” Amanda fairly shrieked. “I have to talk to you!” She grasped his arm once more and shook him. His mother, absorbed in dealing with a customer, paid no attention. “You have to tell me,” breathed Amanda, quivering in her intensity, “what am I doing here?”

“Doin’ ‘ere?” The boy looked about. “Why,” he answered in a curiously gentle voice, “you lives ‘ere, miss.”

“That’s just the point! I don’t live here, as you very well know. Please,” she cried. “I must go home. You must tell me how to get back!”

“Oh no,” replied the boy, still in that kindly tone, so at variance with his gamin features. “You lives ‘ere, miss. There’s no ‘back’ t’go to, doncher see.”

“No, I don’t see. Don’t
you
understand? This is making me crazy!”

The boy broke into a gusty laugh. “You ain’t crazy, miss. You’re too pretty to be crazy. Ye just gotter take things as they comes, is all. You jist remember where you lives now and ye’ll be right as rain.”

The boy made to scamper off, but Amanda’s grip was still firm on his arm. “Oh, no you don’t, you little devil—”

The boy’s cheerful laughter rang out again. “Nah—I ain’t no devil, miss. Ye got the wrong end of the stick, there.”

The next moment, despite her best efforts, the boy had slipped away from her and her last glimpse was of his slight figure nipping around a corner and out of sight. Amanda whirled to the apple woman, who was staring at her in stolid disapproval.

“Please,” gasped Amanda. “Your son—I must speak to him. Where do you live?”

“Son?” The woman snorted. “He ain’t none o’mine. He’s jist one o’ them street arabs that pesters the life out o’ honest folk like me. Didjer want ter buy an apple, then?”

Wordlessly, Amanda shook her head and, turning, stumbled back to the Bridge house. She was intercepted on the front steps by a worried Hutchings.

“Miss! Goodness, what are you doing out here? Are you all right?”

Amanda’s knees were trembling so badly she could hardly stand, but she brushed past the little maid. “I—I’m fine, Hutchings. No,” she added as the maid scurried after her up the stairs inside the house. “I need to be alone. I’ll be—down presently.”

Having gained her room once more, she fell on the bed and lay there motionless for several minutes. Had what just happened really happened? Had she just been instructed by a prepubescent Munchkin to more or less go with the flow? She felt as though the universe were disintegrating around her.

She sat up slowly. She had asked for guidance, and she had received it. She supposed. Sentence by sentence, she reviewed the conversation with the apple boy. Was she actually to believe that she had really and truly been transferred in time? That she was no longer Amanda McGovern, successful, approaching-middle-age academic, but was now Amanda Bridge, beautiful, pampered, young, and rich? And under the thumb of a tyrannical father, she added, to say nothing of being engaged to a man who was in love with somebody else. How could such a thing be possible?

The obvious answer, of course, was that it was not possible. Yet, here she was. For the past two weeks she had watched events unfold precisely as they would have if she really were a traveler in time, a dweller in someone else’s body.

And who, for God’s sake, was the person or persons who kept showing up in her life? She moved to the little writing desk near the window, and taking paper and quill in hand, began a systematic catalog of all that had happened to her since she sat down in that shadowed pew in Grosvenor Chapel.

All right, despite her confident pronouncements, her life as Amanda McGovern had not been altogether happy. Deprived of a whole body, she had grown bitter and resentful. She was jealous of friends who loved and were loved in return, yet she was incapable of truly giving of herself. Her success at the university was the one bright spot in her life, and lately even that small happiness seemed to have dimmed. She wanted more.

“Life in 20th c. not great,” she wrote.

The old man in the chapel had seemed to understand her unhappiness. He and the old flower woman and the boy at the apple cart were either very closely related or were one and the same person in various guises. Was it—he—she—some sort of supernatural being? Had she been searched out for a purpose?

“Old man in church—agent for change?”

She had been having headaches, and the one that had struck her in the chapel was a real killer.

Wait a minute. Killer?

Amanda Bridge had also been having headaches. Was it possible the two Amandas had been suffering
from some sort of terminal awfulness? She had heard of aneurysms striking down people without warning.