Miss Antiqua's Adventure (21 page)

“He—he went to his rooms on an errand, Father,” Julianne replied with a peculiar reluctance. “But he promised to call upon us later, and you are welcome to wait.”

“Wait! Humph!” the stout man bellowed as he creaked to his feet. “Waiting’s all we’ve been doing, Lady Julianne.”

“Sir Arthur! How nice to see you,” her ladyship said as she glided toward him. “Indeed, if we’d but known you were here, we’d have left the opera even earlier. The performance was
dreadful
,” she finished with feeling as she discarded her cloak.

The frantic message sent in the glance to her husband indicated that seeing Sir Arthur was perhaps less than a pleasure, but she extended her hands graciously and smiled so charmingly, her visitor momentarily forgot his peevishness.

“Well, well, daresay it’s nice to see you, m’dear, or would be under other circumstances,” he amended with a lowering frown to the woman still seated on the settee.

“Look here, Greybill,” put in his Grace, “let’s say we go over to collect Vincent, eh? Rout him out and bring him back, eh?”

“
Tres bien
! If you go, you do not go without me,” exclaimed the woman in heavily accented English. “I must face this Monsieur Vincent, this man who ruins
ma petite niece
.” The exertion of her rapid rise set the breasts exposed above her plunging
décolleté
to bobbing like two great rounds of jellied beef tumbled upon a platter.

“Your niece?” Lady Julianne echoed, sweeping a bewildered look over her guests.

“Oh, eh, forgive me, m’dear,” said her father quickly. “This is Madame Yvonne Tallien. She and Sir Arthur came to the Abbey with the most astounding tale. They seem to believe that Vincent has abducted her niece—”

“My granddaughter!” Sir Arthur interjected on a huff.

“
Vraiment
! You wait, Monsieur, until she has been ruined to admit the relationship! You cruelly refused her mother, my sister—”

“You see what sort of deplorable
mésalliance
m’son contracted?” Greybill demanded thunderously. “And now—now the girl goes running off with that young rakehell—”

“She was abducted!” Mme. Tallien interposed indignantly.

“Abducted, eh? Then why, Madame, did the chit write you that she was traveling under m’son’s protection, eh? Answer me that!” his Grace charged.

“I tell you, Sedgwick,” Sir Arthur barked, “there’s something havey-cavey goin’ on here! When this woman,” he added with another penetrating glare at Mme. Tallien, “turned up with this tale—”

“But it is true!” Mme. Tallien insisted. “There was
l’hôtelier
who had it from
ma petite’s
own lips that she was being taken against her will. And if she had run away with this rogue, it would not be so wonderful,
non
! For she was an unprotected innocent, my poor Antiqua.”

“Ay, and whose fault is that, Madame?” Greybill questioned while stabbing his forefinger into the air before her nose.

“Well, b’God, if Vincent’s indeed run off with the granddaughter of my oldest friend, he’s gone beyond the pale!” Sedgwick announced in tones which projected easily to the servant’s hall. “There’ll be the devil to pay for this!”

“If you would all be seated,” Sir Giles interjected in a calm voice which nonetheless commanded attention, “I think we can put your minds to rest. Though it is true Miss Greybill traveled from France with Vincent—”

“
Hélas
! Did I not say so?” Mme. Tallien asked in melancholy victory. It was easy to see where Antiqua got her flair for the dramatic as, with her hand pressed to her ample bosom, her aunt sank ponderously to the striped blue silk settee.

“Madame, your niece has come to no hard, I assure you,” Winthrop said, guiding a glass of Madeira into her hand. “Miss Greybill has been living under my wife’s protection since her arrival in London.”

“Indeed, Antiqua has been
quite
safe,” avowed his wife.

“But before she reached London, what then, what then I ask you?” Greybill growled. “It’s no secret what sort of fellow Vincent is w’the ladies—forgive me, Sedgwick, but facts are facts.”

“Miss Greybill’s maid was in attendance at all times, sir,” Sir Giles explained. “May I suggest we all take a glass or two while we await Vincent’s return?”

Though this excellent suggestion seemed to mollify the gentlemen, Mme. Tallien was not to be so easily detoured from her object. “But if Antiqua is  here, then I must see her now!” she cried. Her towering turban swayed dangerously as she attempted once again to come to her feet.

“I—I am afraid that isn’t possible,” Lady Julianne confessed quite unhappily.

“Eh? What’s this!” her father bawled.

“Antiqua isn’t here at the moment. She and Archie have gone to—to Vauxhall. A pleasure outing, that is all,” Julianne said too quickly. Under a trio of stares, she blushed.

Mme. Tallien appeared confused. “But who is this ‘Archie’ and what is my Antiqua doing with him, if it is M. Vincent who abducted her?”

“Archie is my son and heir, the Marquis of Rosewarren,” his Grace stated with a lofty air.

“So! You have raised both
les fils
to ravish young innocents, M.
le Duc
? First this Vincent, known everywhere to be a
roué dangereux
, and now this—this Archie, who has vanished with
ma petite. Mon dieu
!”

“I make little doubt,” said a soft voice from the threshold, “that it is Miss Greybill who has led Rosewarren into a merry mischief.”

“Vincent!” chorused a round of voices suffused with varying degrees of warmth.

Lady Julianne sprang from her chair, but drew up short on her way to greet him. One glance at the grim set of his lips and brutally cold look in his blue eyes wiped away every trace of her relieved smile. “Oh, Jack, what has happened? Where are they?”

“They are not at Vauxhall—though they did indeed go there,” he answered, presenting her with the vestiges of a pink plume last seen gracing a certain bonnet known to them both. “But Miss Emma was quite right. Her mother did not venture from her house tonight. Whoever accompanied them to the Gardens, if anyone did, it was not the Humperdink woman.”

Julianne paled. “Oh, when I saw Emma Humperdink take her seat in that box at the theatre, I knew it meant disaster!”

“Nonsense, my love,” her husband chided gently. “Whatever scrape the pair of them have gotten into, it’s surely nothing more serious than a child’s prank. As Vincent said, a mischief, nothing more.”

Her troubled gaze flew from the bedraggled feather in her palm to her brother’s face. She found little reassurance in the forbidding countenance. Gradually, she took in his riding dress, the many capes of his coat and the shining boots. “You are going after them?”

“Certainly,” he confirmed. “I’ve sent my stablehands to make inquiries at the posting houses along the roads leading out of London. I’ll soon know which way they’ve gone and then, of course, I’ll bring them back. By now, Rosewarren is in all probability heartily tired of dancing to Antiqua’s tune.”

One of his rare smiles punctuated that last, ridding Julianne of her worst fears.

“But you! You are the
roué
who abducted my niece?” Mme. Tallien inquired intently, just as the two gentlemen clamored to know what the deuce was going on.

With a curl of his lip, Vincent bent her a low bow. As he straightened, she shook her chins. “But,
non
! He was most
stupide
,
l’hôtelier
! You are not such a one to ravish
le jeune fille
.”

“Thank you,” Vincent responded with a half-smile.

His father, who had been avidly following this by-play, fixed him with a stern look and demanded, “
Did
you abduct this girl?”

“If I had, do you think I’d have given her over to Julianne’s keeping?”

“But then how did m’granddaughter come to be traveling under your protection?” Sir Arthur blasted.

“When she determined to return to England, I offered Miss Greybill my escort.” A mask of boredom descended over Vincent’s features.

“This is what I do not comprehend,” Mme. Tallien pronounced. “She was on her way to Paris, not
from
it! I must know what happened in Amiens, and though it is not at all what I should like, if it is necessary, M. Vincent, you shall marry
ma petite
!”

All eyes focused expectantly on Vincent. He was weighing just what he could tell them of his meeting with Antiqua when Fillmore threw open the doors to announce Oliver Fawkes.

Hat in hand, looking like an overgrown schoolboy, Fawkes waited.

He was greeted with the rap of a word. “Well?”

“’Twas no trace of ’em, Master Jack, on any of the main roads.”

“They didn’t take the Great North Road?” The question was put in a tone of seeming disinterest.

Fawkes studied the calm, expressionless features of his employer before replying. “No, sir, that they did not. ’Tis certain ’tis no marriage over the anvil for them.”

“And what of the lesser roads?”

“Now
there
is something o’interest. A hired hack traveled toward Easton this night.”

“Speak plainly!” shouted Sir Arthur. “Has m’granddaughter gone to Easton?”

“Well, sir, not as I can say. Neither the young miss nor his lordship were seen in the hack, but the ostler at the Three Swans reported some rum doings to our lad Jed.”

“Yes, man, get on with it!” Sedgwick huffed impatiently.

“This particular coach was closed up tight, according to the inn man, your Grace, and mighty odd he thought it when he went to tap the coach-door, to see if a glass or two might be wanted, you understand, and a rough-looking jarvey jumped down from the driving box to send him readily about his business. Some rare goings-on there, says the ostler to our Jed.”

“You said west toward Easton?” Vincent asked.

“Fawkes ran a stubby forefinger down the nub of his broad nose. “Yes, sir, somewhat in the direction of Balstone Hall, that be.”

Vincent had not lingered to listen. He spun past his servant and, with a slight shrug of apology to the company, Fawkes pivoted to follow him. The savage set of Vincent’s jaw as he strode through the assembly kept them wordlessly immobile fully half a minute after his steps faded away. Then, as if on cue, pandemonium exploded as each exclaimed at once.

“Eh, what’s this? Balstone Hall?”

“Humph! Balstone’s ruin of an estate!”

“But,
voyons
! What is this ‘Balstone Hall’?”

“Oh, Giles, he looked perfectly
murderous
! You don’t think William Allen can be mixed up in this, do you?”

“I’m very much afraid, my love, that Vincent believes so.”

“But where the devil’s that young fire-eater of mine going?”

The Duke’s young fire-eater was at that moment mounted in his high-sprung curricle-in-four racing westward.

Oliver Fawkes did not have to see the twitch in the muscle of Vincent’s cheek to know how violently dangerous was his mood. Knowing well that the taut rein governing Vincent’s temper was stretched to its utmost limit, Oliver sat mundanely as the vehicle cut a dash through the trafficked London streets. Nor did he comment when, upon leaving the city behind, Vincent opened out his leaders to racket perilously over dark and rutted country roads. He occupied himself with pondering how he might keep his young master from dealing out the sure death writ so clearly in those gelid blue eyes and resigning himself to his certain failure.

* * * *

While Oliver Fawkes and his master were thus occupying themselves, the Marquis of Rosewarren and his companion had been busily making plans for marriage in the one case and for escape in the other. Later, both energetically devoted themselves to the destruction of a fine pewter bowl. Now they waited, hearts pounding in frantic unison, steeling themselves for the re-entrance of the Viscount Balstone.

Footsteps sounded within the hallway. The two could scarcely breathe as they heard another door kicked open, then the clear stamp of boots halt before their own. Signaling for Antiqua to be quiet, Archie poised himself to strike, his hands fisted together and raised with menacing intent. The steps passed on. He lowered his fists,, casting a puzzled look at Antiqua. The wood of the door smashed into his shoulder, hurling him against her. They toppled to the floor. The door snatched wide, silence rang and a soft, but fluent, oath brought the pair of them to their feet.

“V-Vincent!” Antiqua stammered.

“What the devil!” Archie exclaimed.

Vincent eyed them both. “You’ve come to no harm?”

Disbelief and relief rushed through Antiqua upon seeing him. The wonderment she had known over her misjudgment of the Viscount paled beside that which she now experienced. Knowing Vincent to be quite innocent of all the treachery she had laid at his door brought an inner trembling. She suffered an intense stab of guilt coupled with humiliation. She attempted to cover her uncomfortable self-reproach with an assured lift of her head.

Archie rubbed his shoulder. “Nothing of consequence. How did you discover us?”

“The pink of Miss Greybill’s gown was visible through the crack of the door. I’m sorry about slamming it into you, Archie, but I thought she was being held by another.” Vincent knew a wave of enormous gratitude upon finding her unharmed. There was much the lady had to answer for, yet, but for the moment just knowing her safe was enough. He captured Antiqua’s hand and led her toward the settee. Sweeping the dust cover from it, he gallantly bade her to be seated.

“What I meant was, how did you know where we are?” Rosewarren persisted. “We don’t even know where we are!”

“If you do not wish, dear boy, for me to intrude upon your schemes, you should in future make certain just where the Humperdinks are engaged before including them in your tales,” Vincent cautioned. “The sight of Miss Emma Humperdink at the Theatre Royal, in white tulle and ostrich plumes, quite ruined the evening for Lady Julianne.”

A guilty glanced passed between the two at this eloquent set-down. With a sigh that approached a laugh, Vincent added, “You find yourself in what remains of the once-grand Balstone Hall.”