My Pleasure (28 page)

“Well. Yes, very well,” the bush said distractedly.

“And have you enough funds to claim your bride?”

“Soon. Very soon.”

“When?”

“Two weeks, give or take a day.”

“Can you not—”

“Miss Nash.” At the sound of Ramsey’s voice, Helena whirled around.

“Mr. Munro!” she exclaimed. She couldn’t let him near the bush. He would know at once someone was hiding there. “Pray, wait right where you are,” she called out. “I…I…my, ah…my dress has caught in the shrubs whilst I was trying to extricate Mrs. Winebarger’s cat, and I would not like you to see me until I have facilitated a repair.”

The two old ladies at the end of the path had turned at the sound of Ramsey’s voice and stood regarding him with deeply offended expressions. Ram returned their look. He dared not risk Helena’s reputation by coming to her when she had expressly asked him not to do so. “Very well. Do you require any assistance?”

“No, no,” she called gaily. “’Twill be but a moment.”

She turned back to the bush. “When can we meet? Where? I have much more to tell you. A letter from Flora to give you—”

“Florrraaa,” the bush sighed.

“Enough! Where? Vauxhall?”

“No! My creditors know about that place. They haunt it,” the bush muttered disconsolately. “I will think of something, but until then…”

The bush shook, and a hand suddenly emerged, clutching at her ankle. Helena jumped, stifling a cry. “For heaven’s sake, Mr. Goodwin—”

“A note,” the bush whispered as the hand released her and set a small folded piece of paper by her foot. “For my Flora. Please see she gets it.”

“Fine. Now go away.” Then, with a sigh for the loss of her one decent ball gown, she dropped down and rent a bit of lace on her hem as she swept the note up. Then she stood up, backing away as though she had just disentangled herself.

“There,” she called, joining Ramsey near the doorway. “Free!”

“Are you all right?” His brows were lowered, hiding his eyes in shadow. He looked so handsome in his dark coat and trousers, his snowy white cravat a foil for his black curls. The moon, flirting with a cloud, suddenly appeared, glazing his lean features with a blue-white sheen.

“Yes. Now, what do you want? Is it something about the fencing lessons? Can you not meet with me this week?” she asked quietly.

“What?” he said. “Oh. No. No, the time is fine. I just…I saw Miss Flora leave the garden, and you did not follow, and DeMarc is nowhere to be seen, so I…”

She stared at him, her heart doing strange flip-flops. He looked, she realized, anxious. On my behalf.

“Then you noticed something in his manner,” she said, ignoring the giddy lurch of her heart. “Something in the way he looked at me?”

“That would be impossible, as he did not look at you at all.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. It would be such a relief to have someone else witness what she had seen, the demon that lurked behind the sober, straitlaced viscount’s handsome features.

“Which makes me decidedly uncomfortable,” he replied.

Her gaze snapped up to meet his.

“Shall we walk?”

She hesitated, feeling all too clearly the critical gazes on them. “I would prefer to sit down, if you don’t mind. There.”

She pointed to a pair of wrought iron chairs sitting directly in front of the doors leading into the ballroom. Seated there they would be in full view of anyone who chose to glance outside. While not precisely chaperoned, she could hardly then be accused of clandestine engagements.

He smiled knowingly. “Must you always be so careful?”

“Always.”

“Very well then.” He waited for her to take her seat and then followed suit, stretching one long arm along the back of his chair, his fingers dangling carelessly a few inches from her bare shoulder. His fingers were strong, she recalled, and smooth. Warm and—

This was ridiculous. Earlier today she had been frightened of DeMarc and ready to jump at shadows. Now Ramsey Munro had only to stroll into a crowded ballroom and her world felt safe, secure—no, more, it felt opulent, rife with promise, delicious with potential.

“You were saying something about how DeMarc’s not looking at me made you uncomfortable,” she said.

“You know you are an extraordinarily beautiful woman,” he stated matter-of-factly. “One has only to look around the room to see the covert glances aimed at you, the way men follow your progress across the floor. Yet DeMarc did not look at you once. More, he made every effort to turn away from where he must have known you were so that his gaze, even in passing, would not cross over you. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think it is because he knows he cannot keep from betraying whatever it is he feels for you when he looks at you.”

“I see.” It sounded so strange. So unhealthy. She shivered.

He saw it and reacted immediately, moving closer and stretching out his hand as if he would gather her to him but then, abruptly, recalled himself. Or rather, he recalled the fascinated audience standing at the far end of the garden. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

“I won’t let him hurt me, either,” she said firmly. “Thank you for telling me this, Mr. Munro. Thank you for believing me enough to give credence to my fears. I shall be doubly on my guard.”

His face tightened with frustration. “You do not have to be. I can be on guard for you. It is what I pledged to do. Let me do it.”

She regarded him with softening eyes. He sounded so angry, and he was trying so hard to control his temper, and Ram Munro, she reckoned, never lost his temper. “If I could, I would. But…”

“But what?” he demanded. “Trust me.”

She shook her head. If he came with her, Oswald would not meet her. Besides, Flora’s secret was not hers to tell. It was a simple matter of pledges and personal integrity. She must turn him toward another subject.

He looked away from her, his jaw tightening, his eyes flinty in the moonlight, his profile that of some handsome, thwarted prince.

“May I ask you a question?” she finally said.

“Yes,” he said irritably. “Of course.”

“Not every question deserves an answer,” she rejoined softly. “I have no right to ask you anything, and you have every right to expect me to respect your privacy.”

His anger left him in a flood. She sounded so contrite. He looked back at her, his expression softening. He loved her. He wanted her approval, her smiles, her understanding. And if in discovering who and what he was, she discovered who and what he was not, so be it.

“My dear young woman,” his voice sounded odd, “I am yours to command. Whatever you desire, simply give me the task. Whatever you would know, ask.”

“My! I hadn’t realized you took your pledge to my family quite so seriously.” She tried a light laugh, only it wasn’t light. It was breathless.

Oh, this has nothing to do with my pledge, he thought, holding her gaze. Her eyes flickered as if she’d read his mind. His mouth curved in a slight smile. “What is it you want to know?”

“Why has the marquis waited so long to produce those marriage documents?”

“Because they didn’t exist before five years ago,” he answered without hesitation. “I would not allow them to be put before the public as truth until”—he paused thoughtfully—“five days ago.”

If the world got wind of his grandfather’s forgeries, there would be a scandal of unprecedented size, and not only would Ram be a nameless bastard again, but his salle would be destroyed. He risked much in telling her this. But he had never been in love before. If revealing his secrets could entice her into trusting him with hers, it would be well worth it. He disliked whatever it was she felt she needed to do that sent her abroad, masked and now armed with a sword, into the night.

Her eyes remained calm. She’d suspected. “But why now?”

“The reason has its roots buried in the past,” he answered. “Do you recall the other men who came with me to your townhouse and pledged to aid your family?”

She nodded.

“Colonel MacNeill, of course, and another, Andrew Ross. Did you ever know why we were in that French dungeon?”

“A little,” she said. “Kate revealed to me some of what her husband told her. You had been sent to France to set up a network of informants, the center being the place Napoleon would least expect it—at his wife’s home, at Malmaison.”

“Yes,” Ram said, fingering the gold rose pin nestled in his white cravat. “Josephine adores roses; she is obsessed with them. As the wife of the rising power in France, kings and queens, deposed princes, and would-be potentates send her gifts of rose plants, all the most exotic varieties. But none have ever been as exotic as a rose that grew in a small Scottish abbey, a gift from a crusader to the abbot who’d cared for his family during the Black Death.”

“The yellow rose,” she said.

“Aye.” His faint Scottish burr deepened. “The yellow rose. We brought her that rose, and offered her our expertise as rose hunters to scour France and Europe for new varieties for her gardens. With her written endorsement, we could have gone anywhere unchallenged.”

His gaze, drifting through a sea of memories, sharpened. “It was a good plan,” he said. “But someone betrayed us before we could even begin to implement it. We were caught and sent to LeMons castle’s dungeons.”

Her gaze remained fixed on his face, the light blue color of her eyes deeper in the moonlight, her blonde hair bleached nearly white.

“Suffice it to say, the French failed to treat us with the respect a Scotsman might expect from their former allies.” He smiled wryly, but then his smile faded. “They executed one of us, the noblest of us, the heart of us, Douglas Stewart.”

His thoughts flashed back to Doug, his brown hair caked with filth, his light eyes fierce, the hectic color high in his lean cheeks as the guards dragged him up the narrow stairs to the guillotine. “Stay true, lads!” he’d shouted before the thick door slammed shut.

“But who would betray you?” she asked, her brows knit.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It had to be one of three: Kit MacNeill, Andrew Ross, or Toussaint, the exiled French priest and ex-soldier who’d planned the enterprise. I always suspected Toussaint was more than he let on.”

His mouth twisted humorously. “I can’t think it was Kit, and for whatever reasons Kit now seems willing to accept that it was not me. Before he left for the Continent, I promised him I would find out once and for all who betrayed us.

“A few days ago I received a letter from a man who was a guard at LeMons. I had sent out some inquiries, offering a reward for any information that could lead me to our Judas. This man answered. He claims he knows who betrayed us.

“He is arriving as part of the retinue of a French duelist who’s been given special permission to enter the country for the tournament. I have arranged to meet him the day the tournament ends, when he will reveal to me the name of the man I seek.”

“But only for a great deal of money,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “And the marquis has a great deal of money.”

“Brava.”

He regarded her with sober amusement. “The sum Arnoux demanded far exceeds anything I can produce.”

He had sat through one long night pondering what to do as the past had crept in and taken occupancy of his mind. He’d thought about his lovely, imprudent mother, his fierce, devil-may-care father, and the bonny life he’d led in the Highlands. Then he’d thought about those few short, terrifying weeks after his mother’s death, and how Father Tarkin had found him and brought him to St. Bride’s Abbey, where three boys had absorbed him into their brotherhood as effortlessly as if he’d always been one of them, as if they were in fact brothers he had simply not known existed. And, finally, his thoughts led to a French dungeon where he and those same brothers had been betrayed, one of them killed, and the survivors irreparably damaged.

Twice he’d lost a family. His parents’ death, senseless as it had been, at least had been unpremeditated. But the second time—With malice and purpose, someone had conspired to destroy them. And that same person wanted to destroy them again. Why?

Now, discovery stood within his reach. He had needed only to ask himself how much he wanted to know. More than he wanted to make an old man suffer for the slights he’d dealt his parents?

Definitely.

“I am the only living blood relation the marquis has, and that, Miss Nash, galls him. Still, his pride is huge, and he grows old, and he wants, desperately, for his line to continue.”

Something dark flickered in her eyes. What was it?

“So I sent him a letter stating that I would allow myself to be found as his rightful, legitimate heir if he would at once settle upon me the sum of forty thousand pounds. The marquis met me at his barrister’s office the same day.”

“It must have been terribly hard for you.”

He regarded her with amusement. “Must it? Why do you say that?”

“Because you didn’t want the marquisate,” she said with soft conviction. “It comprises obligations and compromises you had no wish for or plans to make.”

His amusement turned to sharp interest. “A bastard such as myself being offered wealth and power beyond his comprehension? How could I not want it?”

“Because you wanted something else,” she mused, regarding him seriously. “You wanted…to teach swordplay as you believe it was meant to be taught. You wanted something for yourself. Of yourself.”

“Did I? How could you know that?” Her insight took his breath away. She was right. He had wanted the salle he’d dreamt of owning, to teach his craft not as a hobby for bored sons of wealthy peers, but as a discipline, as an art.

“Because I heard how you spoke, the timbre of your voice.”

He didn’t deny her perception, but neither could he affirm it. What good would it do now? The life he’d dreamt about was no longer within his reach. A marquis did not teach. There would be other obligations and duties to fill his time, other petitions for talents and acumen he did not even know whether he owned, let alone whether he could put to good use. But he would try. As he had told Callum Lamont, paying one’s debts was a habit he could not break. And now he owed not only his grandfather but all those on whom the marquisate depended for their livelihood.