Slightly Sinful (16 page)

"And he has that air about him," Geraldine said, "that speaks of lineage and money and power. Ah, be still, my heart! Do you think your uncle would be fooled if I impersonated you, Rache, and pretended to be Mrs. Smith?"

"Not for a moment, Gerry," Phyllis said. "But think how romantic this is. I daresay Mr. Smith will fall in love with Rachel and she with him, and they will marry and live happily ever after."

"It would not at all surprise me," Sergeant Strickland said, "if you will forgive me for saying so when no one asked me my opinion, missy. And if you will forgive me, sir. I sometimes talk too much."

Alleyne grinned about the table. Rachel, he could see, was looking decidedly uncomfortable.

"But the next step," Bridget said, bringing order back to the gathering, "is to decide on a story for Mr. Smith to tell. We must work out a whole life history for him and leave nothing to chance. Then he will need to learn his part, and Rachel will need to learn hers."

There was a flurry of suggestions, most of them quite preposterous-and most of them provoking a great deal of laughter. Alleyne let them talk for a while before holding up one hand and drawing everyone's attention.

"I will definitely not be a chimney sweep who has discovered he is a prince," he said, "or a duke who is the king's natural son by his favorite mistress, though both were brilliant and tempting suggestions. I will perhaps be a baronet with an estate in the north of England. But it would be best if Miss York and I decided upon the details between ourselves and reported back to all of you for approval."

"Miss York!" Phyllis exclaimed. "You must call her Rachel now, Mr. Smith, and she must call you Jonathan-unless you choose to become Orlando, as I suggested a moment ago, since it is a far more romantic name."

"There is a bottle of wine," Flossie said. "It is in the pantry on the floor under the bottom shelf, if you would be so good as to fetch it, William. We have been keeping it for a special occasion. I do believe this is it. We have a pretend marriage to celebrate."

Rachel York was subdued, Alleyne noticed as toasts were drunk a few minutes later just as if they had really celebrated their nuptials today. Everyone else made merry.

But an already mad scheme was about to become considerably more outrageous.

"You can't turn up on the baron's doorstep without a valet to your name, sir," Sergeant Strickland told Alleyne as he set down his empty glass. "I'm not the best-looking gentleman's gentleman you ever set eyes upon, on account of I am big and talk rough and have only ever known soldiering, but I'm better than nothing. I'll go with you, sir. There is no need to worry about paying me no wages. Like I told you before, I got enough for my own passage to England and for my needs for the next month or so, and this will give me something to do while I get my feet under me, so to speak."

Alleyne looked at him with raised eyebrows. But really, the man was right. How impressive would he look if he turned up at Chesbury Park as Rachel's husband without a valet? And without baggage and money? With little more than the clothes on his back, in fact. He suddenly realized that there was going to have to be a great deal of careful planning for this scheme before they could rush off to Wiltshire.

But before he could give the sergeant any answer, Bridget spoke up.

"And Rachel ought not to arrive at the house with no one but Mr. Smith for company," she said, "even if she is supposedly married to him. It is only a recent marriage, after all, and Baron Weston must be shown that she was in Brussels with a decent companion. I'll be she, and I'll go with you, my love. Besides which, since Mr. Smith and Rachel are not really married, it would not be right for them to travel together without a chaperon, would it?"

"Except that with that hair, Bridge," Flossie told her, "Baron Weston would spot you for a whore even if he's blind in both eyes."

"I can dye it," Bridget said. "I'll dye it back to my own color, a nice, respectable mousy brown."

"We can't let you have all the fun, though, Bridge," Geraldine said. "If you are going to have a holiday for a week or two, then I don't see why we all can't. I for one don't feel like going back to work in London before we have dealt with that Crawley toad, and we can't do that until we have heard from one of the sisters about his whereabouts, can we? If we have to sit around twiddling our thumbs, we might as well have fun at the same time. I fancy myself as a lady's maid. I have a gift for dressing hair-you have all said so-and picking out what a woman ought to wear so she can show to best advantage. I'll come along as your personal maid, Rache. It would appear peculiar if you did not have one. With any luck I'll discover that Baron Weston employs a houseful of tall, handsome footmen and a stableful of rugged, handsome grooms and a parkful of bronzed, handsome gardeners. You won't have to worry about me disgracing you, though. I know how to be respectable when I have to be."

Alleyne, looking about the table, caught between hilarity and dismay, wondered if Rachel was feeling as out of control of the situation as he was. Her silence suggested that she was.

"What about us?" Phyllis asked, sounding aggrieved. "What are Flossie and I supposed to do while the two of you are enjoying yourselves at Chesbury Park?"

"Use our imaginations, Phyll, that's what," Flossie said. She batted her eyelids over her big blue eyes and touched one hand coquettishly to her blond curls. "Ladies, gentlemen, meet Mrs. Flora Streat, respectable and respected widow of the late Captain Streat, and dear friend of Miss Rachel York, who was recently married from my home. And you, my precious," she added, smiling graciously at Phyllis, "are my dear departed husband's sister, if I do not mistake, whose own husband, Captain Leavey, is at present on active duty in Paris."

"What, Floss?" Phyllis replied, draining her glass of wine. "You have trouble being sure that you recognize your own sister-in-law? When we came out from England together and are going to return there together?"

"Making a detour on the way to our own home," Flossie said, "in order to accompany our young friend, the new Lady Smith, to Chesbury Park in Wiltshire with her husband."

"Now," Geraldine said, "I am mortally sorry that I have condemned myself to the kitchen. Though perhaps not. At least I'll have all those footmen and grooms and gardeners to myself when I am not busy brushing Rache's hair. And I'll have Will to gossip with."

Alleyne cleared his throat, and four sets of hair plumes nodded in unison as the ladies gave him their attention.

"We must all remember, though," he said, "that this is not just a lark we are kicking up. Our main concern must be to see to it that Miss York-that Rachel and I make a good enough impression on her uncle that she is granted what would be hers anyway at the age of twenty-five."

They had all sobered and were gazing earnestly at him.

"But it will be a lark too," Geraldine said after a short pause.

They all launched into merry chatter again.

"We will have to wait at least a week or so longer before leaving, though," Rachel said, speaking up at last. "We must wait until Mr. Smith has more of his strength back and until Sergeant Strickland is free of his bandages."

"Jonathan, Rachel," Phyllis reminded her. "You are going to have to start calling him Jonathan. Or Orlando. Don't you think he looks like an Orlando?"

"I got an eye patch," the sergeant said. "But I haven't worn it yet on account of all the bruises haven't quite gone away. I don't want to scare you ladies."

"I think you will look rather dashing, Sergeant, bruises notwithstanding," Phyllis told him. "As long as there is no blood."

"There is no need to wait upon my account," Alleyne assured them. "We might as well get this charade started as soon as possible."

He-a man without money or possessions or identity-was fated, it seemed, to travel to England with a fake bride, surrounded by an entourage consisting of a piratical ex-military valet and four flamboyant whores masquerading as servants and ladies. And they were going there in order to trick a perfectly respectable gentleman out of a fortune in jewelry.

And it had all started with his impulsive suggestion in the garden this afternoon.

"You are in pain, Mr. Smith," Rachel York told him suddenly, "and desperately tired. I daresay you have overtaxed your strength today. You must be more careful tomorrow."

She was quite right, of course. He had been ignoring the symptoms for some time. But he hardly knew how to sit upright at the table. His leg throbbed unceasingly. A headache niggled at him from somewhere behind his eyes.

She got to her feet.

"Come," she said, "I will take you to your room."

He raised his eyebrows again. Take him there? He was incapable of going alone? But he did not argue.

"Yes, you go with him, Rache," Geraldine told her. "And you tuck him up warm for the night."

"Just don't tuck yourself up with him, though, there's a good girl," Flossie added. "This is a respectable establishment, and you are only pretend married."

"And don't stay too long, my love," Bridget said, just as if her former charge had not spent hours of each day in his room for the past two weeks. "Leave the door ajar."

"Ah, but I do love a bit of romance," Phyllis said with a sigh. "Even if it is only a pretend one."

"There is one thing about a lie," Alleyne said to Rachel when they were out of earshot of the others. "It grows like a rolling snowball as soon as it has seen the light of day. Are you alarmed by what you have just heard?"

"I have been alarmed by everything I have heard since this afternoon," Rachel told him as she closed the door of his bedchamber but did not latch it behind them. "But I will not stop either you or them. You are going to help me make them happy, and they need a break from this way of life that has been theirs for years past. Despite appearances, they are not really vulgar creatures. They are my friends, Mr. Smith. And even if they are found out, even if you are, so what? I will be no worse off than I am now, will I? My uncle will be unable to deny me my inheritance after my twenty-fifth birthday."

"We had better follow their advice," he said. "You had better call me Jonathan, and I had better call you Rachel from this moment on. We are presumably going to be deeply in love and not the sort of couple who address each other with distant formality."

She regarded him with a frown.

"Very well, then," she said. "But one thing must be clear from the start, Mr.- Jonathan. There must be no repetition of last night and no flirtation-on either of our parts. You may be already married, and even if you are not, you would not want to be saddled with a wife even before you have remembered your usual life. And I am not in search of a husband. I thought perhaps I was when I met Mr. Crawley, but I have realized since I got away from him that my independence is altogether too valuable to me to give up easily."

"Besides all of which," he added, not to be outdone, "we were both disappointed last night."

"Y-yes." She had the grace to blush.

"There will be no private dalliance despite the public display of genteel affection we will need to show, then," he agreed as her eyes slipped from his.

He was rather enjoying himself, he discovered-except that he was weary to the point of exhaustion and felt like one giant ache from the crown of his head to his toenails.

He lowered himself to the side of the bed and propped his crutches against the headboard-and held up a staying hand when she would have dashed toward him.

"Rachel," he said, "there is no need for you to wait on me hand and foot and other body parts any longer. Indeed, I would be altogether happier in my mind if you were to keep a permanent distance from me from this moment on."

The color fled from her face.

"Very well, then," she said. "I will send Sergeant Strickland."

And she turned and exited the room without another word. Alleyne rather suspected that far from being a whore, she was really quite a dangerous innocent. She had not even understood him just now. She had thought he could not bear to have her touch him. She was right, of course, but not for the reason she was probably imagining.

He might be still annoyed with her, and he might have taken leave of his senses today-indeed there was no might about it-but he was still not dead. And she was still the most beautiful, most alluring creature he could remember setting eyes upon.

Now that it was too late, it struck him that devising a scheme that would keep him close to her-very close, in fact-was perhaps the most stupid thing he had done in his life. And that was probably saying something!

Who would have thought that one fall from a horse's back could cause such havoc with one's life?

He was in the process of trying to lift his left leg up onto the bed when Sergeant Strickland arrived to help him.

"You done the right thing, sir, begging your pardon for giving my opinion when you did not ask for it," Sergeant Strickland said as he removed Alleyne's coat and then swung his legs onto the bed.

"Thank you, Strickland," Alleyne said. "But since I suspect you are accustomed to expressing your opinion whether asked for it or not, you need not apologize every time you do it."

"Thank you, sir," the sergeant said, helping Alleyne off with his pantaloons. "This bandage has worked a bit loose. Shall I rewrap it for you?"