Authors: Cupboard Kisses
“I must beg your pardon, also,” Cristabel finally wrote to Captain Chase, “for my deplorable conduct on that unfortunate afternoon. I can only plead a minor indisposition and the fatigue of the journey as excuses for my lapse, along with dismay at my circumstances, caused, I must assure you, by my own rash actions.
“You must not think for one instant that I hold you responsible for my welfare, despite your kind offer. You have already been more than gracious in deeding me this property. After an awkward beginning, due again to my inexperience, the house is becoming successful, enough so that I may thankfully return your loan. Please accept my heartfelt gratitude and congratulations on your return to health.”
* * *
Cristabel had some trouble with the close: Respectfully yours? But did she respect him? Your servant? Never! She settled on “Sincerely,” but tacked on an invitation to take tea some afternoon, at his convenience, out of conscience and curiosity.
She wondered if the captain really was as civilized as his letter indicated or if a secretary did the writing for the savage. She would also like to know what he looked like, without all the bandages. She recalled him being tall, nearly as tall as Viscount Winstoke, but not as broad. He must have dark hair, from the stubble on his chin and the curls on his chest, which image she hastily consigned to the furthest reaches of her mind. Mostly she remembered the voice, gruff and booming, that would rattle the very windows on the front parlor if he ever came to call. He wouldn’t, of course, not that toplofty libertine. He would be too busy at his debauchery for such a tame pastime as tea with a “self-righteous spinster.” She unfortunately remembered a lot of his words, too.
* * *
“Tea!” he shouted, sending a footman and two maids scurrying off to the kitchens. “How in bloody hell can I go there as Captain Chase?”
“In your dress uniform?” Jonas Sparling offered, which only got him a darkling look and the offending letter waved in his face.
“Blast, what a coil. And you say there’s something havey-cavey going on there?”
“Aye, something’s not shipshape, but Miss Marie didn’t say what.”
“Miss Marie?”
“Aye, she’s the trim little galley what does the sewing over there, like I told you. Sad eyes, she has, but a friendly smile and the shape of a mermaid.”
“You better watch yourself, man, you know about the women there.”
“So she ain’t on her maiden voyage, m’lord. That just proves she’s seaworthy, if you get my drift.”
Winstoke did. “Then you won’t mind calling there and keeping an eye on things for me till I can straighten out this mare’s nest.”
“Be my pleasure, Cap’n.”
“Not too much pleasure, Sparling. Don’t get us into deeper waters.”
“I thought we was already on the rocks, Cap’n, sir.”
Just then the footman entered with a tray. “What the devil is that?” Winstoke thundered.
“Tea, my lord, like you ordered.”
“Tea? Why is everybody suddenly trying to drown me in tea? I am trying to think, by George, not cure a cold. Get it out of here.”
Winstoke tapped his chin with Cristabel’s letter. “I wish I knew what kind of trouble she was having.”
“All Marie would say was the watch wasn’t much help; that’s why they had a parcel of mongrel watchdogs around. None of them worth a maggoty sea biscuit, if you ask me.”
“You’ll have to go back… Let me think.”
By the next morning, Winstoke had a course of action. He sent Sparling off to Kensington to return the hundred pounds, which was a gift, not a loan, his note said, and he also wrote, regretfully, that business would keep him from accepting her kind invitation to tea. The captain sent a bouquet of roses along with Sparling and the note and, since he was already at the flower sellers, had the shop boy deliver a nosegay of violets to the house on Sullivan Street, signed “Yrs., Winstoke.” A good commander always had a second plan of attack, and took any port in a storm.
* * *
That’s how the next stage of Winstoke’s campaign went: Cristabel would return the money, he’d send it back with Sparling, tucked in sheet music for the harp, inside a box of bonbons, under the cover of a book. It wasn’t a loan, it was a gift. If she wrote that she couldn’t accept a gift of that magnitude, for propriety’s sake, he sent it back, for his conscience’s sake. Now it wasn’t a gift, it was repayment of a moral debt. She had a conscience, too; he had honor. She had honor; he had persistence. It was all lighthearted and charming, especially to Marie, who smiled a great deal now. As for Cristabel, the peripatetic hundred-pound note gave her a chance at playful banter, a silly challenge, a time to get her mind off Viscount Winstoke. Captain Chase’s roses were decorating the parlor, but Winstoke’s violets were in a vase next to her bed. Neither one called.
She did not care, she told herself, that he—Winstoke, of course, not Chase—had believed her declaration about never wanting to see him again. It mattered not a whit, she insisted, that he finally realized she was a lady and now wasn’t interested at all. Then why, she wondered, if she couldn’t give a fare-thee-well farthing, were her days so dismal, her nights so empty? She gave herself a mental shake and practiced a hollow social smile for the boarders…until she went downstairs for tea. There he was, sitting at perfect ease, chatting with Mrs. Flint and the Douglas sisters. No, not Captain Chase, whom she might have expected, but the viscount, looking even more devastatingly handsome than she remembered. Her heart was smiling, a warm glow singing inside her; he’d come. He cared. But what if he was only here to repeat his improper advances? What if he offended the boarders with his murky morals?
“What are you doing here?” she hissed as he jumped up at her entrance.
“You invited me for tea, remember?”
“I never did! I told you I never wanted to see you again.”
“Oh, I must have been thinking of someone else.”
“You have windmills in your head, my lord, and—”
“I know. Amazing, isn’t it?” And he treated her to that rare smile that started on one side of his mouth and widened to light up his eyes. She had to get him out of here, before her knees gave out.
As if reading her mind—or her nervous glance at the tittering Douglas sisters—the viscount declared it a perfect day for a drive, unless Miss Swann preferred taking tea with her lovely guests. The formidable Mrs. Flint snorted, and Cristabel ran out for her cloak and bonnet which a grinning Fanny, in her neat new uniform, already had in hand.
There was nothing for it but that Cristabel take the arm his lordship held out to her. She did
not
have to return his triumphant smile.
The curricle was shiny black with gold trim and had a crest on the door. The tiger was a young lad who jumped up behind as soon as Winstoke had the reins. The horses were matched bays, sleek and eager. And the passengers were—Well, the passengers made less noise than the well-greased carriage wheels. The viscount was concentrating too hard to make conversation, trying to remember Perry’s lessons about getting the new team through the traffic and repeating in his mind the speech he’d been rehearsing, for when they reached the park. Then he could hand over the blasted reins and take Miss Swann in his arms as he longed to do. For her part, Cristabel didn’t know why his lordship had come, why he was glowering at the horses, or why she was feeling trembly just from his nearness on the narrow seat.
This was absurd. Boy would have more discourse. “Thank you for the violets,” she said, at the same moment he said, “Thank you for coming.” They smiled. He complimented her on her pretty gown; she admired his new prowess with the ribbons; they agreed it was one of the loveliest days so far this season. They smiled during the long pauses. The tiger shook his head in disgust.
“How is it you never mentioned you were a school teacher?” the viscount asked when there was an empty stretch of road.
Cristabel was still pondering why he had invited her out, with a tiger up behind for propriety’s sake. “What was that? Oh, Miss Meadow. How did you learn about that?”
“Uh, one of the boarders must have mentioned something about it. You never did.” If there was the slightest bit of rancor, that if Miss Swann had been more forthcoming, he’d not have landed them in such a bumble-broth, Winstoke hid it in threading his carriage through the traffic at the park gates.
“It was not a particularly pleasant time for me; I suppose that’s why I never talked about it. My life in the vicarage in earlier years was much happier.”
“You never specifically mentioned a vicarage either, you know.” His mouth twisted.
“I didn’t? Are you sure?”
“Quite.”
“No matter, Miss Meadow’s Academy for Young Ladies was nothing I wish to dwell on. It’s like your period in the Army, I’d guess.”
Now was the perfect opportunity to correct her, to tell Miss Swann that it was the Navy, not the Army, where he’d been, and been wounded. Near blinded, in fact. He’d seen ample evidence of his Belle’s temper, however, and wasn’t about to chance it, not in front of half the
ton
out for their promenade. She’d flay him alive, without a doubt. No, much better to go as planned, find a secluded spot and make his speech. Then, he thought with a smile, when she was in his arms and rosy with his kisses, then he could confess his identity. He was not a coward; he wasn’t a clunch, either. “Shall we get down and walk?” he asked.
Cristabel wasn’t craven either, she just had a good memory about another day in the park, and her own less-than-proper response to being alone with his lordship. “No, thank you. It’s such a pleasure seeing things from this altitude.”
Winstoke frowned. Then his brow cleared and he told the tiger to get down for a bit, they were just going to walk the horses over to that stand of trees to cool the beasts. At least there would be privacy.
The viscount took a deep breath. “Miss Swann,” he began his prepared oration. “Belle, there is a lot about me that you don’t know and some, I’m afraid, you wouldn’t like.” The horses were ambling along under the trees, so he relaxed his grip on the reins and turned to Cristabel. She looked so dashed alluring with her face turned up to him expectantly, sweetly, and the tiniest bit cautiously. Her tongue darted out to lick her lower lip nervously and Winstoke forgot all the words he was supposed to say. “Oh God, Belle, you are the world to me! I have to have you by my side, dearest. Please, please let me care for you. Come home with me and—”
Cristabel heard
care
for you, as in place you in my keeping, and
home,
as in a bachelor’s rooms. What she didn’t hear were words of love, or doing the great honor, or the rest of his sentence, which was, “Come home with me and meet my mother.” She jumped to her feet and turned to climb down from the carriage, which saved her life, for what she next heard was the loud crack of a gunshot.
The horses heard it, too, and felt the bullet whine just over their heads, and they panicked. Cristabel was slammed back into her seat by the sudden lurch forward of the curricle, and Winstoke grabbed up the slack in the reins. He was too late, for in his moment of inexperienced hesitation the bays had the bits between their teeth and were bolting toward the crowded carriage path. Winstoke sawed on the ribbons, his shoulders straining, and finally succeeded in turning the horses back to the trees away from the groups of people who were already screaming, doing the frightened animals no more good than his
whoas.
Then the carriage grazed a tree trunk and slewed around behind the horses to aim crosswise toward another. Instead of hitting broadside, the wheel caught and wedged the curricle in tight against the bole, stopping horses, carriage, and Miss Swann in an instant. Lord Winstoke, however, holding onto the reins instead of the carriage sides like Cristabel, went flying off the seat at the sudden halt. He missed the tree by mere inches and landed with a dust-raising splat right between the horses. The vicious, unpredictable, immense horses, Cristabel thought in horror. She got off the carriage almost as quickly as Winstoke had done, running around to dodge between the flailing hooves and drag his unconscious body to safety.
Of course, the horses were placidly grazing by then. They were good-natured beasts, selected by the viscount’s friend Adler for just that quality, and had carefully stepped around their master to reach the greener grass as soon as they realized that forward progress was impossible, as well as unnecessary.
Merely winded, the viscount had already crawled out of hoof range, but he let Cristabel help prop him against the tree while he caught his breath. In fact, he might let her cradle his head and weep her agonized outpourings over him forever, rather than face the ignominy of the crowds he could see rushing to their aid. Zounds, some hero he was, with grass stains on his shirt front. And it could have been her, his precious Belle, thrown out of the curricle—and all because of his stupid pride. He could drive that pair as well as hedgehogs could sing, but he had wanted to show off for her. He might have gotten her killed instead. He groaned.
“Please don’t die! Oh please don’t die!” Cristabel sobbed, knowing she would see that picture of him sailing out of the curricle a hundred times in her nightmares, knowing suddenly that if he died she may as well die, too. It didn’t matter that he was a rake, with all the scruples of a slug. She loved him. She didn’t know how it happened, or what she could do about it, or why Cupid played such stupid tricks on people, but she loved him. Just don’t let him be hurt, she prayed, and held him closer.
“I’d be less likely to perish, dear heart, if I could breathe,” he told her with a smile and a wink. She dropped her arms and jumped up. He got to his feet, a little more slowly, and softly brushed a tear from her cheek. “You do care,” he whispered as the tiger and others ran up to them. “Everything will be fine, you’ll see.”
He could not say more, not with so many people examining the horses and hauling the curricle free, or later, driving home at an embarrassingly slow pace, his hat missing, his clothing rumpled, the tiger mutinous behind. Cristabel was silent, too, hoping the viscount would not renew his shameful offer, not now, when her love was new and her heart ached to share the discovery.