My Pleasure (37 page)

“Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“My God, the poor bastard never saw it coming!”

“He still doesn’t understand what’s happened to him!”

No. No. No. She shoved and pushed her way through the mill, desperate to get to him and then, suddenly, she was through and she saw him. Ram. Standing.

She forgot everything then, Tawster and DeMarc, the murder of Arnoux, the poisoned sword. All that mattered was that Ram was alive. Unharmed. Whole.

“Thank you,” she breathed, barely aware of the tears streaming down her face, the smile trembling on her lips. She grabbed hold of a nearby sleeve and tugged at it until a round-faced man looked at her, beaming with pride. “What happened?” she asked.

“Not one touch. The Italian did not score one touch!” he shouted over the riotous crowd. “Never seen anything like it. ’Spect I never will again! Uncanny skill! Uncanny!”

Ramsey was turning now, his blue gaze sweeping over the crowd, as hands clapped him on the back and arms waved wildly.

Then he saw her. And the crowd, locating the object of that blistering gaze, miraculously parted, creating a corridor between them. As in a dream, Helena followed it.

She heard someone call out, “What prize for England’s champion? What would you like, sir? What reward can we offer you?”

Ram’s gaze locked with hers. “There is only one thing I want,” he said. He stood stiffly, this incredible, honorable, noble man, fearful of her answer, uncertain but willing to abdicate his pride by publicly declaring himself.

Pride. She had too full a measure of that trait. She’d once thought it was the only thing that the world could not strip away from her. She had clung to it. Hidden behind it. Grown suspicious in maintaining it. But what was pride without an equal measure of humility? Without trust? Without love.

“Miss Nash,” Ram began, his voice rough. “Miss Nash, would you—”

Her fingers flew to his lips, silencing him. He misunderstood. His eyes shut briefly against what he assumed was her effort to stave off his public embarrassment. He swallowed and opened his eyes. They were tortured, longing, damned. He started to turn away.

“Marry me, Ramsey Munro,” she said. He stopped. All around them everything stopped. Every voice dwindled away, the cheers died, the claps and handshakes ended.

“What?” He stopped, his back stiff, shoulders tense, bewilderment filling his voice.

“Marry me because when I close my eyes at night every dream that calls me back to wakefulness, every image that inspires anticipation in another day, is filled with you. I see your arms opening to embrace me and I want to feel their strength. I see your smile, and I want to smile too. I hear your voice and I want to answer. Because I love you.”

He turned around. Hope and caution warred in his eyes.

She looked at him, trying to find the words that would make him understand, and found inspiration. He would ever appreciate irony, her bastard marquis.

“And if you will not marry me because of that, then marry me because you will be a marquis and I would make a fine marchioness. Marry me because I will never bore you. Marry me because our children would be surpassingly gorgeous. Marry me so that I can become the finest female swordswoman in the world.” Her eyes fell. “Marry me because I want you. Just marry me, Ram. I most ardently beseech—”

He snatched her up, crushing her in his arms that trembled.

“Enough, lass!” he said against her lips. “I’m yours!”

DISPLACEMENT:

moving the target to avoid attack

AND WHEN THEY SENT the Watch to look for Tawster’s body…it was gone.

“WHY DON’T WE just change St. Bride’s name to Gretna Green,” grumbled Brother Martin, the abbey’s cantankerous apothecary.

“I do like a wedding,” replied his companion, round and benevolent Brother Fidelis, who as head gardener of the abbey had been given the task of bedizening the chapel with flowers and was now, the day after the ceremony, wistfully taking them down. “And was there ever a prettier bride?”

“Mrs. Blackburn was every bit as handsome,” Brother Martin sniffed. He had developed a tendre for Helena’s sister, Kate, during her stay with them, and no one was allowed to criticize her by word or inference.

“Oh, yes. She’s a very handsome woman. But Miss Nash!” Brother Fidelis smiled dreamily. “She looked like an angel, what with all that silvery hair and in that pretty white frock.”

“An angel given in marriage to Lucifer,” Brother Martin said darkly. “What Father Tarkin ever saw in that black-haired whelp, I will never understand. Always was too canny by half, if you ask me, and more airs than the Prince of Darkness himself.”

“He never made me uncomfortable.”

“I didn’t say he made me uncomfortable!” exclaimed Martin grumpily. “I said he had airs.”

“Well, he’s going to be a marquis. A marquis’s got to have a few airs.”

“Yes,” Brother Fidelis said thoughtfully. “And that’s odd, don’t you think? Him being made a marquis? Especially seeing how last time I checked England didn’t recognize a Catholic marriage with an underage bride.”

“Hm,” Brother Martin said with little interest. “Well, I never have understood how these things work.”

“It doesn’t work that way, I can assure—”

“Come on!” One of the younger monks poked his head into the chapel, bobbed a quick genuflection toward the altar, and gestured them out. “They’re leaving!”

“’Bout time,” Brother Fidelis grumbled, bowing toward the altar before scurrying to catch up with Fidelis, who was trotting out ahead of him. “Next thing you know, we’ll be having christenings.”

His gaze fell darkly on the very pregnant figure of very young Flora Goodwin, who smiled beatifically from her seat beside her dull-witted but very prosperous-looking husband. Behind them sat a sour-faced dumpling of a woman in black. For whom she was in mourning, Martin did not care to guess. But had he asked, Lady Tilpot would have pronounced with sepulchral coldness, “My niece.”

Not that Flora cared. She had her Ossie, and Ossie had a fortune, and soon the two of them would have a little Goodwin. If it was a boy, they would name him Oswald. If it was girl, Alfreda. Because Flora, despite having made some choices in the past that would lead one to suppose the contrary, was no one’s fool.

The ginger-haired young lady heading for the trio of monks with far too easy a stride and far too knowing a smile for her tender years was clearly no one’s fool, either. Charlotte Nash had neither her sister Kate’s dark handsomeness nor Helena’s ethereal beauty. Tip-tilted hazel eyes, a mouth some would call generous but more would declare too large, a stubborn jaw, and honey-tinted skin had firmly denied her the celebrated beauty of her sisters. No one, least of all Charlotte, seemed to care. She was reckless, ungoverned, and impolitic, with a growing reputation as a romp and a flirt, with a disastrous tongue and unrestrained wit.

It was a reputation she went lengths to foster.

“He is simply the most delicious man in England,” she informed Brother Fidelis. Brother Fidelis blushed.

“What are you talking about, young lady?” Brother Martin crabbed.

“Ramsey. Simply hateful that he’s now my brother. But,” she laughed, “so gratifying that he’s to be a marquis. Should afford me any number more degrees of latitude in my behavior.”

At Brother Martin’s shocked expression, she arched a gleaming brow.

“Someone should have taken a switch to you years ago,” Brother Martin declared.

“Oh?” Her eyes opened, twinkling merrily. “I’ve never been switched. Hm. It might prove exhilarating.”

Brother Martin sucked in a hissing breath and stomped away.

“Well, that was entirely too easy,” Charlotte proclaimed, disappointed.

“My dear,” Brother Fidelis said, his kindly round face troubled. “This is no way to go on. You must look to the future, to the family you will one day want, the husband whom you will want to respect and be respected by, the home and hearth you desire.”

“Ew! Hearths require cleaning, husbands are entirely too possessive, and as for families, well,” she shrugged, a little wistfully, “here today, gone tomorrow. Now, don’t look like that, Brother Fidelis, and don’t you worry. I have my future all planned out, and it will be a corker.”

“It will?” Brother Fidelis said hopefully. “But…what will you do if not marry?”

“Become infamous,” she said simply, and this time she did not look like she was teasing.

“You’re certain he told your wife ‘Dand’?” Father Tarkin, seated behind the big, scarred desk in his private apartments, furrowed his brow. He bent his white head over the rosary clasped in his hand before looking across the surface littered with correspondence, maps, and books to where Ramsey Munro stood.

“Yes,” Ram replied. “But I never saw the man. Or rather, if I did, I didn’t notice him. Helena said the only noteworthy thing about him was his baldness.”

“Hm. Then we don’t even know the color of his hair.”

“We don’t even know what the man was laying claim to. He told Helena, ‘Tell Ramsey that Dand sends his regards.’ He may have been intimating that he killed Dand.”

The abbot shook his head as if trying to clear his thoughts. He was a straight-backed old man. When he’d been a boy, Ramsey had tried to emulate that intractably erect posture. “You must be careful, Ramsey.”

“I intend to be, though I doubt it necessary. From Helena’s description of his injury, he was pierced through the lung. He may have had enough time to crawl away. But he has most probably died from the wound.”

“You cannot take that for granted.”

“Father Abbot,” Ram said, regarding him soberly, “I can assure you, since my release from LeMons I have taken nothing for granted, and now, with Helena…” He lifted his hand. He needn’t say anything else. The abbot had seen them together: how he looked at her, how she awoke to his presence whenever he came near, how he warded over her, even from across a room, and above all the tenderness and amazed joy they shared.

“We will wait, then.” The abbot pushed his chair back, satisfied. There were things he could do, measures he could take to ascertain the truth of what was going on. Measures that did not require Ram’s involvement. He smiled. “I hear you have lately discovered your legitimacy.”

At this Ram had the grace to look troubled. “I felt I made the right choice, Father. The marquis offered me the wherewithal to discover the traitor. The price, though a blow to the pride, did not seem too great.”

“No, son. It was not. And God knows the truth. So, what now?”

Ram gave a lopsided smile. “Back to London. Find a house. Helena is trying to convince me to write a treatise on swordplay. I may do so. I may even teach. Apparently, if one becomes a national hero one can do whatever one da—whatever one pleases.”

“You will offer Charlotte Nash a place in your new family?”

Ram frowned. “Helena already offered, and Charlotte declined. She said she’d had enough changes of address, and as the Weltons wanted her company, it would be discourteous to deprive them of it.”

“She sounds a formidable young lady.”

“Yes.”

“And how does your wife feel about this?”

Ram’s expression became a little puzzled. “Surpassingly well. She says Charlotte ‘will triumph,’ whatever that means, and as a newly minted husband I of course agree.

“Besides,” he went on, “she has informed me that her concerns for the immediate future lay elsewhere. She is determined to play matchmaker.”

“Really. For whom?”

“My grandfather and Lady Tilpot. She is convinced they deserve one another.” His blue eyes gleamed appreciatively.

The abbot, having met Lady Tilpot and having heard much about the marquis over the decades, stared owlishly at Ram. “Your wife has a decidedly Jesuitical bent of mind.”

“I know,” he said proudly. “Delicious, is it not?” He looked down at the clock on the abbot’s table. “And speaking of wives, I would like very much to stay, but I would like even more to join Helena. I am sure she is in the carriage already. Very punctual, my wife.” He smiled more broadly. “I do like saying that. ‘My wife.’ ”

“Of course.” The abbot rose to his feet. “God be with you and yours, Ramsey.”

“Apparently so, Father,” Ramsey said with a return of his dry humor. “And right thankful I am.”

Helena, having said her goodbyes to the wedding party, entered the richly lacquered carriage the marquis had insisted on sending to the abbey—though nothing could induce him to attend the papist ceremony Ramsey had insisted upon. A smile of anticipation on her lips, she settled back against the soft velvet cushions.

A moment later the door opened and Ram climbed in, giving a sharp rap to the roof before taking the seat across from her. At once the carriage rolled forward. “We’ll be in Sterling by nightfall,” he said conversationally.

“That’s nice,” she said and yawned delicately.

“You’re tired,” Ram said, immediately consolatory.

“A little,” she confessed. The hours of their wedding night had been well filled, but not with sleep.

“Let me draw the curtains. I’ll wake you when we stop for supper.”

“Would you? Thank you,” she said, smiling sweetly as Ram suited deed to word. At once the carriage interior was steeped in darkness, warm and enveloping. Helena waited, counting the minutes until they had driven out of the abbey yard and were on the long road heading south, and then very slowly, very quietly slipped from her side of the carriage to Ram’s. She reached out and found his chest. She heard his breath catch, but he did not move. With nimble fingers she plucked the rose pin from his cravat and slipped it into her pocket. Then, while he silently acquiesced, she eased his jacket from his shoulder and over his long arms.

With lingering touches, she unwound the silk cravat and, finding the little pearl buttons of his shirt, popped them free one by one. Slowly, incrementally, she peeled back the linen and was rewarded by the feel of the crisp, silky curls that covered his muscular chest. She pressed her lips into that light furring and felt his heart drum thickly in response.

Her fingers traveled a sensuous trail down his chest, rolling over each velvety rib to his hard belly and stopping at the waistband of his trousers. She trailed her lips across his chest, nipping lightly, pausing at his flat, leathery male nipple to touch her tongue experimentally to the hard kernel at its center. His body jerked. His hand came up and clasped her wrist hard, but neither urging nor restraining, simply holding her. She smiled against his warm, dense body.