The Makeshift Marriage (5 page)

Nicholas at last finished his coffee and seemed about to take his leave of her, and in desperation she spoke to him. “Sir Nicholas, may I beg a favor of you?”

“A favor?”

“Would you please escort me to my room?” Oh, how shameless those innocent words could sound!

“I beg your pardon?”

“I
—I assure you that I am not making advances,” she said, her face a miserable crimson, “and it is not so very much to ask of you, is it?”

“I know that you are not and I know that it isn’t,” he said, smilingly disposing of her anxiety on that score. “But nevertheless I must wonder greatly why you ask me.”

Unwillingly she glanced at the baron. “I wish to avoid any possibility of meeting with the baron,” she said at last.

“Has he been bothering you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“It is entirely your concern, of course,” he said, mistaking her reticence for unwillingness to divulge the true nature of things.

“I have not encouraged him in any way, in spite of what you think of me.”

“In spite of what
I
think of you? And what may that be?”

“I think we both know your opinion of me, Sir Nicholas.”

“Do we indeed? Well this half of us is greatly intrigued and very much puzzled. However, we digress. I shall, of course, be delighted to escort you to your room, Miss Milbanke.”

Relief surged through her as she rose to her feet and put a timid hand on his arm. She did not know how tightly she was holding him, her fingernails digging into his arm, until they were ascending the staircase.

He smiled. “I realize that it is ungentlemanly of me to draw attention to it, Miss Milbanke, but you truly have a grip like a vise.”

She took her hand away immediately. “Forgive me, I did not mean
—”

She was covered with confusion. She was also embarrassed, afraid, anxious, and she felt very foolish all at the same time.

He spoke gently. “I know that you did not mean it, but it seems to me that you are unduly upset. Why are you so distraught?”

“I believe that the baron has been following me since my arrival.”

“You believe, but you are not certain?”

She bit her lip. No, she wasn’t
certain,
how could she be when it was more intuition than anything else. She was not imagining her encounter with the baron in the Piazza San Marco, but she could not say for certain that it had been him at her door earlier…
.

“Miss Milbanke, I hope that nothing I have told you about him has brought on this agitation, for if it is, then I cannot apologize to you enough.”

“It has nothing to do with what you have said.”

They continued up the staircase and halted at last by her door. “What will you do tomorrow?” he asked.

“Tomorrow?” She had not thought beyond tonight…
.

“If it will help in any way, I can escort you to and from the dining room. We can, as you so aptly put it, present a united front.” He smiled. “And I can reap the benefits of escorting the most beautiful woman in Venice.”

The compliment was unexpected and oddly reassuring somehow. “Thank you, Sir Nicholas.”

“For the offer or for the compliment?”

“Both.”

“As to the compliment, well I believe it is long overdue, considering my odious conduct until now, I apologize, Miss Milbanke, for I vented my anger upon you, and it is not your fault that my problems seem without satisfactory solution. You have stoically endured my heavy presence and must surely have wished me in Hades. Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive, sir,” she said, for suddenly his crimes were forgotten as she smiled into his eyes.

“And you wish me to walk to the dining room with you in the morning?”

“I would be most grateful.”

“Then I shall come at half past nine.”

“Thank you.”

He took her hand and kissed it. “Sleep well, Miss Milbanke.”

“And you, Sir Nicholas.”

She watched him walk away along the richly decorated passage toward his own room. His hair was very golden in the lamplight, and his figure, clad in dark blue velvet, looked very tall and impressive. How good it had been to see that other side of him, and how especially good to be flattered by him. If it were not for the unseen presence of Miss Augustine Townsend, it would be easy to read more into his change of heart, but Laura knew that that would be foolish. He was being kind because he thought she was frightened. No more than that.

Suddenly something made her turn sharply to look over her shoulder. It was that same uneasy sensation of being secretly watched. It seemed that a shadow moved swiftly out of sight by some velvet drapes. The baron…
.
He had been there, listening. She opened her door and went swiftly inside, locking it securely behind her. She listened, her breath held. But there was no sound. She relaxed a little then, tossing her reticule and fan onto the console table and teasing her evening gloves off finger by finger. Pulling her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, she stepped out onto the balcony.

The welcome night breeze ruffled her hair and whispered against the cool silk of her gown. In the moonlight the grape hyacinths in their window boxes were turned to silver and on the water below the lights of Venice flashed and twinkled on the moving surface.

On the steps below she heard the baron hailing a gondola. Leaning forward she saw his unmistakable figure climbing into a gondola which was then pushed away, gliding from the hotel steps as the gondolier poled it out into the center of the Grand Canal. Laura breathed out slowly. She was safe for the time being. So great was the comfort of knowing that Frederick von Marienfeld was not in the hotel that she began to hum a little tune as she undressed and prepared for bed.

She was ready the next morning a quarter of an hour before she expected Nicholas to call. Once again she was wearing the pale green sprigged muslin gown she had worn on her first morning in Venice, and she stood on the balcony watching the fruit barges making their way to market.

Someone knocked at her bedchamber door, and she turned in surprise. Nicholas was early. She hurried to open the door, but the smile of welcome died on her lips as she saw not Nicholas but the baron standing there.

She could not speak. Her hand crept to her throat to finger the black velvet ribbon.

He smiled coolly and walked into the room without permission, closing the door behind him. “Good morning, my dear Miss Milbanke.”

“Please leave,” she whispered, backing away from him. All the terror returned, and not even the brightness of the spring morning could dispel it now.

“Leave? But that would avail me of nothing.”

“Avail you?”

He nodded, still smiling as he came closer to her. She was aware only of the intensity burning in his eyes. “I ask you again to leave!” she cried.

“How very beautiful you are, even when you are afraid,” he murmured, reaching out a gloved hand to touch her pale cheek. “You have eluded me, Miss Milbanke, and your beauty almost led me astray from my main purpose. But now it is done, in a few minutes it will all be over and my purpose completed
—well, almost completed.”

She stared at him.

“Even had you been as ugly as sin itself, Miss Milbanke, I should still have come here now. Fortune, however, has smiled upon me and made you so very beautiful that my task will be sweetly accomplished. Oh, how sweetly.”

“Please go,” she said, her voice barely audible, “Please…
.
”

He reached out to her and she stumbled back against a small table as she tried to elude him. She wanted to scream, but as before in the piazza, her voice lost all strength. Please let Nicholas come soon! Please!

Moving with unexpected swiftness, the baron caught her wrist, his smile not wavering as he drew her into his arms. He was so very strong that she stood no chance. Pressing her body against his, he forced her face up and kissed her hard on the lips. It was a kiss that seemed to last a lifetime, during which the mute helplessness and revulsion swam over her again and again in sickening waves. Her mind screamed for help to come, but her voice was struck dumb, her strength drained so that she could not even struggle against her assailant.

Vaguely, almost from beyond consciousness, she heard someone knocking at the door. It must be Nicholas! It
must
be! Please God…. With a supreme effort she summoned her poor strength to thrust herself away from the baron, and at last found voice enough to scream.

The door opened immediately and Nicholas came in, his eyes hardening with anger as he saw the scene. Instinctively he held out a hand to her and she ran to him, clinging to his fingers and almost sobbing with relief.

“I thought he was you,” she cried, “I let him in.”

The door remained open and Nicholas coldly inclined his head toward it. “I think your presence is displeasing to Miss Milbanke, sir,” he said.

The baron smiled, not at all perturbed by the situation, indeed he seemed to be rather enjoying it. “Yours is the presence which is displeasing, my dear Sir Nicholas.”

Two Austrian officers stood outside the door, their attention caught by what was happening, “Baron, I demand that you leave,” said Nicholas.

“But you heard what Miss Milbanke told you,” said the baron reasonably, “She let me in. Do not let her protestations of innocence fool you, Grenville. She invited me in knowing full well what would ensue. She has played games with me since first she arrived, enticing me and playing the coquette. It was all leading to but one purpose, which as a man of the world you must know as well as I do. You have interrupted a tender consummation, sir, and it is
I
who must ask
you
to leave.”

Laura stared at him. How very convincing he was, how very plausible!

The baron smiled again. “Keep your well-bred nose out of my affairs, Grenville, and you may take that as a timely warning, a warning to which you would be advised to pay good heed.”

Laura knew suddenly that he was doing it all purposely; he was deliberately trying to provoke Nicholas into a duel. But why?
Why?
Her fingers tightened over Nicholas’s. “Be careful,” she said urgently. “Just let it pass, I beg of you.”

The baron’s dark eyes swung angrily to her then. “Whores should be seen and fondled, madam, but never, ever heard!”

“You go too far now,” said Nicholas in a cold voice.

“Too far? When I state the obvious
—that the lady is a whore?”

“You are a liar, and have lost any claim to being called a gentleman.”

Again the baron smiled. “I suggest that you retract that, my dear sir, for I do not take kindly to being insulted.”

“I retract nothing.”

Laura stared from one to the other in growing horror. The inevitability of it all was terrifying. They were moving toward an unavoidable confrontation, and she was the unwitting catalyst. the pawn the baron had chosen to employ. For some reason the Austrian had singled Nicholas Grenville out to be his eleventh victim, and he would be just that unless she could dissuade him now from allowing the baron to force him into a corner from which there was no escape.

“Sir Nicholas,” she pleaded, “don’t listen to him, don’t let him have his way. He
wants
a duel, can’t you see? Please, just retract and let it finish at that! Please.” She whispered the last word, almost in tears now, for she knew that she could not divert him.

Nicholas ignored her. “I will not retract,” he said again to the baron.

“Then I consider my honor to be impugned and I demand satisfaction.”

“No!” breathed Laura desperately.
“No!”

The baron smiled coldly at her. “He will not listen to you, Miss Milbanke, for he is an English gentleman, a man of pride and honor. He would sacrifice both were he to step down from me now. Is that not so, Grenville?”

She lowered her eyes. This could not be happening. Only a short while ago she had been on the balcony in the sunshine, everything had been so calm and pleasant…
.
Now it was all a nightmare from which she could not awaken.

Nicholas spoke. “Name your time and place and send your seconds to me.”

Laura’s fingers slipped away from his. Blinded by tears she leaned her hands on the cold marble surface of a table, her head bowed. He was throwing his life away, and for what? For
honor!
What was foolish honor when set beside his life?

She heard little of the next exchange between the two men before the baron left the room, nor did she hear much of what the two Austrian officers said as they offered their services to Nicholas as his seconds. Then they too had gone and she was alone with Nicholas.

He closed the door and she turned to look at him, tears shining in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry
—”

“You have no reason to be.”

“If I had not involved you in my foolish anxieties, then he would not have been able
—”

“I involved myself willingly enough, and I must remind you that you distinctly tried your best to avert the danger. I chose not to listen.”

“It’s still all my fault.”

“No.” He took his handkerchief and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Please don’t cry, for I cannot bear to see a woman weep.”

“He used me in order to force you into this duel.”

“Come now, that is a little fanciful. You underestimate yourself, Miss Milbanke, for you are an exceedingly beautiful woman, by far desirable enough to lure a man like the baron.”

But she could remember the baron’s words only too clearly. But now it is done, in a few minutes it will all be over and my purpose completed
—well, almost completed…. Even had you been as ugly as sin itself, Miss Milbanke, then I should still have
come here now. Fortune, however, has smiled upon me and made you so very beautiful that my task will be sweetly accomplished. Oh, how sweetly…. Those were not the words of a man driven solely by desire to possess her, they were the words of a man who had an entirely different object in view. He had also said something about her beauty almost leading him astray from his main purpose. What else could he mean but that until this one time he would not have been able to successfully involve Nicholas Grenville? The baron had used her to achieve this duel with Nicholas, and nothing anyone could say would turn her from that opinion.