Beyond A Wicked Kiss (18 page)

West skimmed the written description, then studied the skillfully rendered watercolor portrait. "Is it a good likeness?" he asked.

"I think so." Ria perched on the edge of her chair and smoothed the folds of her gown over her knees. She had chosen a dark-gray day dress with lace edging at the scooped neck and hem. It was serviceable, and satisfied her desire for plain, simple lines. In observance of mourning, she wore a wide black band on the upper sleeve of her right arm and covered her shoulders with a black, fine woolen shawl. "She is very pretty, as you can see."

West nodded. "It is perhaps what brought her to the gentleman's notice." Jane Petty's likeness stared back at him and he felt the pull of the girl's leaf-green eyes. Here was a hint of mischief. She had a clear complexion, if he was to believe Miss Taylor's painting. No spots marred her fair skin. Her hair was a dark honey-brown, cut short, and curled forward to frame her heart-shaped face. In the portrait she wore a green ribbon hair band the same shade as her eyes. It was a loving detail supplied by the artist that West knew would distract someone looking at the watercolor for the first time. It was doubtful Jane was wearing that hair ribbon any longer, or even that she had worn it when she disappeared.

"What about her family?" he asked, putting the papers to one side. "You have said nothing about them."

"Because there is nothing to say. She has none. Jane is one of the school's charity students. She was plucked from a London workhouse when she was Amy's age, and brought here."

"Plucked?" West's glance narrowed a fraction. "Plucked how? By whom?"

"I should have to look at the records, but I think it was Lord Herndon—he has a seat on the board—who found her and thought she showed promise. He sent her here. That was before I joined the school, but I can check my facts if you wish."

"I most definitely do wish."

Ria heard something in his tone that prickled the back of her neck. "Why?" she asked. "What is it you think you know?"

West was a long time in answering, weighing the consequences of doing so. "Let me ask you a question first, Miss Ashby," he said slowly. "What do you know of the Society of Bishops?"

Chapter 5

"The Society of Bishops?" Ria repeated. "It is not familiar in the least. Are they clerics?"

West laughed at that but without genuine humor. "Hardly, although they have been known to demonstrate a certain religious fervor." He glanced at the clock and saw there was time enough to relate his information, though perhaps not with a guarantee of privacy. "I wonder if you would be willing to accompany me to Ambermede in exchange for particulars regarding the bishops."

"Accompany you?" She could not have been more surprised. "To the manor? Whatever for?"

"You ask a great many questions at once, you know, but the answers are yes, yes, and because I wish it."

"Well, as long as you wish it, then I must hold my objections, mustn't I?"

West winced a bit, knowing this softly spoken statement was but a precursor to illuminating every one of the reasons she must not join him. Before he could inject his plea that she should restrain herself, she was already off the leash. He took some solace from the fact that she did not nip and yip at him. She made her argument to the logic of the thing, not the emotion. When she had finished he nodded once and then asked, "Will an hour be long enough for you to collect your things?"

* * *

In the end it didn't matter but that he would have his way. Ria had been able to fashion a compromise in which she was allowed to have an hour and one-half to pack her portmanteau and valise and an additional hour to set her house in order. The latter involved meeting with her teachers, placing Mrs. Abergast in charge temporarily, and dividing her responsibilities for instructing geography and history among them. She left drafts to pay the laborers for the roof repairs and, in the event Mr. Oliver Lytton made an appearance, specific directions that he should leave immediately for London to investigate the leads Amy provided.

She had been in favor of dismissing the man, but when she mentioned it to West, he had been adamantly opposed. It was yet another thing she conceded to him without knowing the why of it, but not before she had wrested a 200-pound-per-annum increase in her allowance.

West returned with the carriage remarkably close to the appointed time, given the onset of darkness and the poorly maintained road between Gillhollow and the school. Snow had also begun to fall, and the graying, bulging underbellies of the clouds promised it would not remain a light scattering for long.

Ria's bags were secured to the roof of the carriage, and West's mount was tethered at the rear. The liveried groom offered Ria and West rugs for warmth before taking his seat beside the driver. The carriage rolled slowly at first, then with more speed as its own momentum carried it forward.

Inside, Ria tucked one of the rugs around her while West fiddled with the lantern so it would remain securely on its hook. When he was done he sat back and propped his feet on the bench opposite him, which put the heels of his boots just beside Ria. She glanced at them pointedly, but said nothing, and he did not remove them. He was not the sort of man one took to task for these lapses, she realized, though he did not seem to mind when she tried. On the contrary, it appeared he found her censure mildly amusing and gave it no more due than he would if she'd told him his stock was askew.

"You are staring at me," she said. "Has no one told you it is rude?"

"Everyone, in fact, has told me."

She raised one gloved hand quickly to her mouth to cover her smile.

"Why do you do that?" he asked.

Ria's blue-gray eyes widened above her hand as she spoke from behind it. "What?"

"Cover your smile. Why do you try to hide the fact that I make you smile—or dare I say it?—sometimes even make you laugh?"

His observation sobered her, and she lowered her hand to her lap. "I think it best not to encourage you."

"Why not? If you are of a temperament that appreciates humor, then why do you not seek more of it? You really should be encouraging me, instead of the opposite."

"You have never seemed to require any encouragement," she said. "Surely it is my prerogative to withhold it."

West ignored that. "Is it because laughter is an intimacy?"

Ria gave a small start that could not properly be blamed on the jouncing carriage. "I don't know what you mean." But she did, and he most likely knew it. In fact, he had nailed the thing perfectly, and she did not thank him for it.

"You have never impressed as thick-witted, endeavor not to do so now."

"We are not moving so fast that I cannot jump without fear of injury," she said, "nor so far from the school that I cannot walk back to it. You have never impressed as insufferable, endeavor not to do so now."

West used his index finger to raise the brim of his beaver hat a fraction so he might better observe her. Her equanimity had been sorely tested, but she was improved for it. There was high color in her cheeks, and he had struck sparks in the flint-colored eyes. Her wide mouth was slightly parted and the pearly ridge of her teeth was visible where she had clamped them. He would never have cause to say that she was beautiful in a temper, but temper had stripped her of artifice and left her features beautifully animated. This latter state was infinitely preferable to the former.

"It occurs, Miss Ashby, that if you married you would have no need of a guardian."

Ria was no longer reactive to the abrupt shifts in his conversation. "Your Grace is a mathematician—therefore, you must study the equation. On one side there are but eight months before my twenty-fifth year and independence. On the other side there is marriage. If we agree that marriage is for a lifetime, and I might reasonably expect to live to see my sixtieth birthday, that is—"

"Four hundred twenty-eight months," West said with nary a pause. "If you marry tomorrow."

"I shall trust your figures," she said. "That is four hundred twenty-eight months that I must endure without being accorded my natural rights. It is not a difficult decision to make. If you thought you hit upon a plan to rid yourself of me, you would do well to revise it. Are you carrying your knife?"

West gave a shout of laughter so loud the horses were startled. The carriage pitched alarmingly until the driver got them under control. It required somewhat longer for West to rein himself in. "By God, Ria, but you are a most singular woman. I cannot remember when I have been so entertained."

"Outside the company of your friends."

"Perhaps," he said thoughtfully, sobering a bit, "but I did not qualify it. What do you know of my friends?"

"Precious little. I was only informed that wherever you gather there is certain to be a stir."

"Tenley." He did not wait for her to confirm it. "It is like him to say so."

"Is it true?"

"On occasion, yes, though to say we cause a stir is an exaggeration." West remembered that it was only this summer past that he and his friends had cut up at a picnic at the Battenburn estate. They had engaged in so much ribald humor over the peculiar feminine properties of a peach that South had nearly choked. Then there had been that business at the theatre when they had stopped the play with their laughter and were taken to task by the lead actress, Miss India Parr herself. That had been but a few months ago. And how much humor had they wrung from East's predicament with Lady Sophia? It would have been a kindness if they had ejected themselves from Lord Helmsley's reception. "Then again," West said, "Tenley may be in the right of it."

"I thought he might be."

"Yes, well, we conducted ourselves with due gravity at the Abbey."

"You must have. I did not know your friends were there."

"They have never not been there when they were needed."

Ria could think of one time, but it had been many years ago, and perhaps they had not been his friends then. She wondered if they would have been willing to throw themselves on his back to protect him from his father's cane. "Is it true you have a name for yourselves?"

Tenley again? West wondered. Or had she learned it from the duke by way of the colonel? It was not commonly known, though people remarked on their names often enough. "At Hambrick Hall we called ourselves the Compass Club. Northam. Southerton. Eastlyn."

"And you are Westphal."

"Now. Then I was Evan and my friends were Brendan, Matthew, and Gabriel. The titles came later. It was my contention that if enough people experienced an untimely passing, they might each take up a title. A little ghoulish, perhaps, but it is the thing boys get up to when they are bored. When we realized what connected the names, it was not long before someone suggested the Compass Club. They called me West because it fit the theme, and they meant to include me, but we all knew I would never be Westphal. It was not only that I was a bastard but that the duke had so little to do with me."

"You bear an uncanny resemblance to him."

"I hope you do not mean that."

Ria could not determine if he was teasing her. His voice held no inflection and his glance was remote now. She chose not to offer support for her comment and asked him to continue instead.

"It would not matter if, God forbid, I had been a stamp of him," West said. "The truth is, without his public acknowledgement of what everyone knew to be the truth, I could never inherit. He supported my education at Hambrick, later at Cambridge, and he arranged a quarterly allowance for me. None of it, though, was done in his own name. My benefactor was Mr. Thaddeus Hood."

"Mr. Hood? But I am certain he was your father's solicitor before Mr. Ridgeway."

"Yes, I know. I don't think there was anyone who didn't comprehend that the duke provided for me, but no one said so."

"You will allow it is peculiar."

West had said as much as he wanted to say on the subject and he was not anxious to hear Ria's opinion. He brushed her comment aside as though it were of no import and resumed telling her about the Compass Club. "Matthew became Viscount Southerton while we were yet at Hambrick. For East it was not long after, I think. Brendan's father and brother died while he was with the regiments in India. He had to sell his commission and return to England."

"So all of you were wrong," Ria said after a moment. "You told me you all knew you would never be Westphal, yet exactly that has come to pass."