The Courtesan's Daughter (34 page)

Caro ran out of the house and down the steps with no thought as to where she would go, but certain that she had to go … away. Away from Ashdon. Away from the cruel truth of her marriage. He didn’t love her; he didn’t even particularly want her. He had needed money and so he had agreed to marry her, and then made a bet that he
would
marry her. How had her mother put it? Paid twice for the same act? And just when had he made that bet, anyway? That bit of missing information loomed quite large.

If she could stop crying long enough she would kill him.

She ran down Upper Brook Street to Park Lane and began walking briskly, certainly nothing to draw attention to herself, unless one discounted the fact that she had no hat, no spencer, and was wearing the wrong shoes for walking. She was forced to discount all three items and pretend that she was out for a healthy stretch of the leg. It was a bit of a struggle to maintain a good pretense when she was crying like a child, but she was fortunate in that no one was out. No one she knew anyway.

The sun was sinking behind the trees of Hyde Park, the birds were chirping gaily in their final moments before seeking their nests, the breeze was fresh and cool, and she couldn’t stop crying.

It had all gone badly awry. She had a husband and, as much as she wanted to, she probably shouldn’t kill him. Murder was rather frowned upon, no matter how stellar the provocation. Ashdon would live on, but she could not live with him.

She just couldn’t, not now that she knew he had never felt the slightest breath of interest in her beyond the money he could make because of her. He had flirted and flattered her, just like the finest courtesan the town had ever seen, and now he had her. Or she had him. Whichever. But they didn’t want each other, not really. He wanted the soothing jingle of coin and she wanted … she wanted …

Ashdon.

Caro sniffed and cursed herself for not having a handkerchief to hand. She pulled off her fichu because, honestly, she looked shabby enough without proper shoes and no coat, what was to be gained by wearing a proper fichu to cover her décolleté? There was no one who cared what her décolleté looked like in any regard. Their marriage was a pretense, and therefore the pretense of Ashdon falling to bits over her fine and lovely bosom was superfluous now. She carefully arranged her delicate fichu in her hands and then blew her nose on it.

It was at that most inopportune moment that she heard the sound of running footsteps behind her. She turned slightly, wadding the fichu in her hand, and beheld Ashdon running toward her.

He did not look grim. Neither did he look resolved. In point of fact, he looked furious.

Without meaning to do so, but with no inclination to stop, Caro began running away from him. Indeed, it was the only logical response, wasn’t it? She certainly would not be foolish enough to run
toward
a furious husband who had just been severely kneed by his wife. Even if he had deserved it. Even if it didn’t look to have incapacitated him for long.

Life was so consistently unfair, no matter how logical one was about it. She was beginning to wonder if being logical wasn’t a highly overrated attribute. Being logical certainly hadn’t helped her much that she could see.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that she was going to lose her race against Ashdon down Park Lane. If life had been fair, she would have been able to outrun him, or at least to have kept her advantage of a head start. Or at the very least been wearing something a bit more solid on her feet than fragile silk shoes.

Whatever her disadvantages in a footrace against her husband, she was not going to stop running. Let him drag her to the ground, if he dared. Let him haul her off into the depths of Hyde Park, slung over his shoulder like a captive. Let him tear the very clothes from her body … yes, well, and that was the whole trouble, thinking like that.

She was prevented from finding out if Ashdon would catch her and what he would do with her when he caught her by the timely intervention of a passing landau.

A shadowed face presented itself at the window, the landau slowed, the door opened, a large hand with delicate tattoos encircling the wrist reached out to her, and she was, with great finesse, hauled inside. Her last thought as she was being lifted into the dark confines of the mysterious landau was that Ashdon would be furious to have lost the chance to throttle her. It was for this reason that she entered the landau grinning.

Twenty-five

A dark and chiseled face, almond-shaped black eyes, and a red fox fur hat appeared from out of the gloom.

“Oh, hello, Uncle John,” she said as she straightened her skirts on the carriage squabs. “Back from France so soon?”

“Should I kill him?” her uncle said in answer to her rather tame greeting.

“Please don’t,” she said, trying to catch her breath from that awful run. “I think it would be more fun if
I
killed him.”

Uncle John smiled in his fashion, which is to say that he made a gesture with his mouth that was slightly above a grimace. His shining black eyes did the actual smiling.

“Agreed. Who is he?”

“Oh,” she said on an exasperated sigh, “he’s just my husband.”

The conversation was entirely in French, of course, as Uncle John, Sophia’s brother, was more comfortably fluent in French rather than English, though his English was flawless. Once she had admitted that the man pursuing her was her husband, Uncle John had tapped the roof of the landau and it had stopped. She had seen the fury on Ash’s face; she knew full well that he was still running to catch her.

“I wish you would drive on,” she said. “I have no wish to be battered by my husband.”

“He would hit you?” When she merely shrugged her answer, he said, “Did you hit him first?”

“In a manner of speaking. But it was entirely deserved!”

John grunted and dropped his gaze, which she understood full well was his way of laughing uproariously.

“This is Lord Ashdon, Westlin’s heir?” John asked.

She could definitely hear the sound of Ashdon’s feet on the stones. His feet sounded furious.

“Yes,” she said, her gaze jerking from the open window to John’s face. “But how did you know? We’ve only been married this day.”

John nodded and looked out the window expectantly. It was quite clear he was waiting for Ashdon. Why was it that men always grouped together in situations such as this? One would almost think that Uncle John thought she
should
get thrashed by her husband on the mere technicality that she had struck him first, though not without immense provocation. Let no one forget that striking detail.

Men were so illogical about these things, particularly when it concerned
that
part of their bodies. Ridiculous, really. Of course, her mother had told her that this would be the result if she ever chose to use that particular brand of dissuasion.

It had been worth it.

Her mother had told her that, too.

“It makes a nice revenge,” John said softly, staring at her.

Oh, that. Revenge again. She couldn’t escape it, no matter how hard she ran. Her indignation tumbled down and lost all its heat, leaving her with nothing but sadness and the painful emptiness of lost hope.

“Is it all of revenge?” she whispered.

“Let’s find out,” John said in an undertone, his words almost swallowed by a quick banging against the landau door just before it was thrown open to reveal Ashdon’s enraged face and heaving chest.

Even enraged, his face did such lovely things to her heart. Completely unfair, of course, but there she was, shackled to a husband who could melt her with a look and he only interested in her for the money.

“You have my wife in your possession,” Ashdon growled, staring at the stranger who had lifted Caro into his landau. “Release her.”

The man, dark haired and of sternly arranged features, answered Ashdon in a language unknown to him. Caro jerked her gaze to the man, obviously startled. What was equally startling was that Caro spoke to the stranger in what Ash could only surmise was the same language.

Ashdon lunged into the landau and grabbed the stranger by the knot in his cravat. “Who are you to my wife?” The man did not so much as flinch. Ashdon snagged Caro’s hand and pulled her so that her hip rested against his; if he had to throw her from the landau, so be it. He might actually enjoy it.

The stranger spoke again, and this time Caro responded in French.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ashdon,” she snipped, trying to pull her hand from his, unsuccessfully. “This is Uncle John, my mother’s brother. He’s just back from France.”

As if coming from France explained anything at all.

“Sophia’s brother,” Ashdon said, looking for a resemblance and seeing it, though dimly. The same dark hair and eyes, the same self-possessed gaze, the same superior smirk; yes, all that, but little else. This man was dark of skin while Sophia’s complexion was fresh cream. This man’s features were sharp and hard while Sophia’s were the fine angles and curves of the oldest French nobility. “He speaks French, but not English? Yet they’re brother and sister? ”

Uncle John answered in French. “We have not seen each other often over the years.”

There were a thousand questions Ashdon could have asked, but he thought the simplest would serve him best. “Why?”

John shifted his gaze to Caro, who returned John’s look expectantly. “Because of one war or another,” John answered, which raised rather more questions than it answered. “You have a dispute with your wife,” John said calmly. “Finish it. In English. I will not intrude.”

“I will do what I wish with my wife,” Ashdon said, staring hard at Caro’s unusual uncle, “in any language I wish. But not in front of you.”

“I am her uncle. Until the dispute is settled,” he said, shrugging one shoulder slightly, “she will remain in my protection.”

“She needs no protection beyond that which I can give her,” Ash said in soft menace.

“Well spoken,” John said.

“Yes, well, I can bloody well protect myself,” Caro said sounding oddly annoyed.

Women were such fools about these things, thinking that they could do as they wished without counting the cost of their actions or their words. It would be his task to teach her otherwise. He was looking forward to it.

“Uncle John? Will you take me back to Dalby House please?”

“I think Lord Ashdon is not ready to return to your mother’s house,” John said, still speaking in French.

And then he spoke again in that strange language that Ash couldn’t name. Whatever it was he said, Caro turned a bit red on the chest, in the exact location that should have been covered by a fichu. The woman needed to learn to keep better account of her fichus. He wasn’t going to allow her to parade her bosom all over London.

“What the devil language is that, Caro? You speak it as well, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” she said as the landau lurched forward at John’s tap. “I’ve been speaking it since I was a baby.”

“And? ”

“And it’s”—she smoothed her muslin skirts, refusing to face him—“it’s Iroquois, if you must know. My mother and Uncle John are half Iroquois.”

Twenty-six

IT was at that precise moment that Ash stopped speaking French. He bloody well didn’t care if Uncle John was offended or not.

“When were you going to tell me? ” he asked Caro.

“I don’t know that I was ever going to tell you. I can’t see what business it is of yours.”

“You can’t? My being your husband means nothing?”

“I don’t know who your grandparents are.”

“Really? I find that odd since everyone knows my ancestry back to the twelfth century.”

“How delightful for you,” Caro said primly, staring out the window. “Where are we going, Uncle John? ” she asked sulkily. “If not Dalby House, then where?” That she asked it in French Ash took to be a sign of civility since she could have chosen to speak in Iroquois. It was a small courtesy, but he appreciated the effort it took given their present state of disquiet.

“I’m taking you into Hyde Park. The dispute will be settled there.”

“I don’t see why,” Caro said stiffly. “Or how.”

“You will,” John answered her, looking at Ashdon as he spoke. It was not a particularly cheerful look.

“I’d like you to explain things to me,” Ash said to Caro, in English.

“I don’t care what you’d like at the moment,” she said, staring out the window at the growing twilight. “There are many things I’d like that I can’t have. I don’t see why you should get what you want when I can’t ever seem to have the things that I want.”

Caro’s voice sounded thick and full, full of tears, most likely. He understood that he was at fault somehow, but for the life of him, he couldn’t riddle out what he’d done wrong. He’d finally turned his finances around and actually made some money for a change, and the very woman who scolded him with every other breath of being a hopeless gambler was angry now that he was finally winning.

If that wasn’t just like a woman.

“If it’s not too inconvenient,” Ash said, addressing Uncle John in French, “I’d be very interested to hear the details of my wife’s ancestry from a reliable source. I’d also like an explanation as to why we’re in the wildest section of the park.”

“Hyde Park,” John said quietly. “Isn’t that where duels are fought? ”

“In the past, yes,” Ash said.

“There is your answer,” John said. “There is a dispute. It must be settled. Caroline’s father is dead. As her mother’s brother, it is my duty to make certain you are the man for her. The right man.”

Ashdon felt his hair bristle on his scalp. “I am her husband by law.”

“By English law. But I am not English, and it is my law which will decide.”

Caro stirred at his side and leaned forward on the seat. “I said you didn’t have to kill him, Uncle John.”