Beyond A Wicked Kiss (31 page)

West looked around his bedchamber for a better place to stow each of the paintings. He would have to take them to London and show them to the colonel. Blackwood was the person best suited to know what could be done—indeed, if anything should be. The colonel sat at the center of an intricate web that stretched the length and breadth of London and beyond. It brought him information from the palace at St. James and Holbern's meanest streets, and he filed it all away in his steel trap of a mind. Blackwood's slender, silky threads reached across the channel to Brussels, Calais, and Amsterdam, then were spun out to Paris, Madrid, Rome, even Moscow. It had been several years since West had sent his coded messages from abroad, but he remembered the intricacy of the network and the speed with which the colonel gathered his intelligence.

West wished there was someone else he might depend upon to take the book and paintings to Blackwood. There were no couriers here, however, and this was not a wartime mission. He was not even in the colonel's service at the moment, but was reversing their long-established roles and asking for his assistance. Blackwood had already been helpful in identifying the academy's board of governors as members of the Society of Bishops. West hoped he could depend on more of the same.

The disappearance of Miss Jane Petty was opening Pandora's box.

* * *

Ria had schooled herself to be able to face West in the breakfast room. When he did not join them for the meal, she was made more anxious than relieved. It meant that this first encounter of the day would not necessarily be on her terms. It was important to her that she not appear to have any regrets about the previous night. He would pounce on her for those sentiments like a cat on a canary. There was no question in her mind but that he would misinterpret her feelings in that regard. The regrets, from his perspective, would be all about what she had done. It was not likely to occur to him that her regrets were for what she had been unable to encourage him to do, namely, apply himself to the particulars of illustration number two.

Before falling asleep, Ria arrived at the somewhat humbling conclusion that she had not the ways of a temptress and was unlikely to acquire them. She was the headmistress of Miss Weaver's Academy, not a courtesan, and she did not aspire to be the latter. What she wanted was the full experience of being a woman without the trap and trappings of marriage, nor did she want to gain that experience in the bed of just any man. It must be someone whose discretion and manners were above reproach and could be depended upon not to take her to his bed then name her a whore for being there. When she considered the whole, it seemed rather a lot to expect.

The idea of being done with her virgin state was not one that had been long in her head. Tenley's single-minded pursuit had provided ample opportunity for Ria to be relieved of her virginity if she had been so inclined. In truth, she had not even conceived of such a notion. She had not lacked for partners during her first Season, and there had been a proper number of rakes and rogues among them. The duke's watchful eye would not have been enough to keep her safely out of their arms had she been determined to be in them. The fact of it was, she had not been interested.

Ria did not hold West responsible for putting so many contrary thoughts in her head, but she believed he should be made accountable for stirring them. It seemed a certainty that but for his provoking, they would have lain dormant for the length of her life. She might have carried on in blissful ignorance, unaware of her baser needs, and secret yearnings would have remained secret, even from herself. It seemed to Ria that West had shown a certain disregard for her with the reckless use of that wicked smile, then underscored that carelessness with a kiss of the very same nature.

Ria found that if she refined upon it too long, her temper required some outlet. To that end, she plunged knee deep into the snowbank beside the hedgerow and began preparing her arsenal. "We shall lay siege to a real castle today," she told Will and Caroline. "Do you think you can throw as high as those windows?"

West almost toppled from his stool when the first snowball thumped loudly against the glass. He managed to right himself by grasping the beveled cornice on the armoire, using the toe of his boot to tip the stool back into place. He made certain the canvas rolls were not visible from any angle before he stepped down and approached the window.

The next snowball exploded on the pane directly in front of his face. Even at the risk of taking one on the chin, he threw open the window and leaned out The children appeared patently horrified. Ria, he thought, was looking rather pleased with herself. If he'd harbored any doubts as to the identity of the one pummeling his window, they were gone now. "Beware!" he called down to them. "I have cauldrons of boiling pitch, and I will be pouring them on you directly."

Will and Caroline swung around to face Ria, their eyes as large a sovereigns. "It is a fib, is it not?" asked Caroline. "There is no poiling bitch."

"Nor boiling pitch either," Ria told her. She touched the little girl's rosy cheek with her gloved fingertips and erased a dusting of snow. "Come. He has already closed his window and will be upon us more quickly than you can imagine. We need more weapons and a better place to fire them."

Will took charge then and led them to the garden, where the statues and topiary provided protection and the terraced landscape offered opportunity to seize the high ground. In spite of the advantages they had, West managed to sneak up on them from the rear and mount an effective attack.

Caroline was the first to defect. She took up a position behind a scalloped fountain on West's side of the battleground and packed snowballs almost as fast as he could throw them. At first Will ridiculed his sister for abandoning them but had cause to reconsider when she sent one flying that caught him in the open mouth. After that he hunkered down and applied himself to her demise. That was when Ria realized it was safer for Caroline if Will was allowed to join West's flank. She waved Will's white neckcloth to signal a temporary truce and demanded parley. In exchange for giving up young William, she received as many snowballs as she could carry in her skirt.

Although the outcome was never in doubt, Ria did not surrender until she was lying on her back in a snowdrift with West, Will, and Caroline standing over her. Even then, she capitulated with ill grace.

West held his snowball at the ready and allowed Ria to consider her options. "Even at Waterloo, Napoleon did not force Wellington and Blucher to such a pass as this," he said. "The man knew when to yield."

Will glanced up at West. "I say, it is very bad of you to compare Aunt Maria to Boney. She is a right'un, through and through."

This pronouncement, delivered in tones that lent it importance and sincerity, had the effect of raising Ria's most beatific smile. At the first glimpse of it, West thought he might go down on his knees. He managed to steady himself, but only by the narrowest margin. Maintaining his balance on the stool in his dressing room had been easier. Offering peace, West held out his hand to her.

Without the slightest compunction, she pulled him down, rolling away at the last possible moment to keep him from landing on top of her. He fell on his face in the drift, and the children immediately pounced. Ria saw that he didn't try very hard to fight them off, and when he finally gave in, it was with grave good humor. Yet another thing she could learn from him, she thought. Surrender did not have to be met with resistance.

Will and Caroline ran off in the direction of the kitchen immediately afterward, in want of large mugs of hot chocolate. Ria and West followed more slowly, brushing themselves off as best they could before conceding they required some help from the other to make a good job of it.

"To do what I must do next I will need to return to London," he said without preamble.

Ria's steps faltered, but she recovered quickly. More difficult to manage was the way her spirits plummeted at this news. "Of course."

"It is this business of Miss Petty that takes me away." He did not know if an explanation was required, but he thought he should offer it.

"Yes, I understand. I did not think otherwise."

"Shall I accompany you back to the school?"

"No. Christmas will be upon us soon and more than half of the girls will be leaving for their homes. For the others it will be time away from the classroom. I have not spent Christmas at the manor since Tenley married Margaret. I think I should like to stay this year, if they will have me."

"You will not be uncomfortable?"

"No." Her smile was a trifle lopsided, slightly rueful, but her chin came up, and she managed to infuse her voice with carelessness. "I shall be perfectly credible as one who is missing you. That will make Margaret's mind easy and keep her at my side to offer condolences and more sage advice."

"While Tenley will remain at a distance."

"If he chooses, yes. I do not think he will have occasion to find me without Margaret nearby. I will return to the academy after Boxing Day but before the new year." She turned to him as he opened the door for her. "How soon will you leave?"

"As soon as the roads are passable for the carriage. Even Draco would find the going hard after the snowfall these last two nights."

"Then let us hope for a quick thaw, for Miss Petty's sake."

"Yes," he said quietly. "For Petty's sake."

* * *

Three days passed before West judged the roads to be in tolerable conditions for traveling. It was not with an eye toward his own comfort that he waited, but to ease the journey for Finch, who suffered a painful attack of gout and could not endure the jouncing and hitching of the carriage for long. Although the valet protested vociferously against the accommodations that were made for him inside the carriage, West would have his way.

They left at daybreak and made frequent stops. West often rode ahead of the carriage, ostensibly to make certain the way was clear, but in truth, to be out of hearing of Finch's pained grumbling and alone with his thoughts.

He had left presents behind for Tenley, Margaret, and the children. It was the first time he had ever made any gift to them, and he was uncertain of the rightness of doing so now. His feelings were not precisely those of a brother, uncle, or even a cousin. He could not say with assurance that he felt anything familial, only that he was not so indifferent toward them as he used to be. The children, he realized, he liked well enough, especially when they were in Ria's company. They were spirited then, playful and energetic, up to every trick that she would entertain. They laughed easily in her presence, and she in theirs. It was only when he came upon the three of them unexpectedly that she grew more restrained.

West did not dwell on this now. He considered the subtle changes in the way Margaret conducted herself and realized that a thaw was not only a characteristic of the weather. Margaret was no longer so determinedly gracious or affable, rather she had become genuinely so, seeming to find pleasure in his company that was not predicated on his inheritance of the title. Her nerves, while not entirely settled, were stretched less tautly when she comprehended he did not mean to send them packing.

As for Tenley, there was no ignoring the strain between them. Neither of them mentioned it or acknowledged that a second seed had taken root now. West decided he could be tolerant of his brother's temperament, though it would have been easier had Tenley possessed even an inkling of what was darkly comic about their circumstances. That Tenley was put out with him for removing Ria from his path was infinitely more understandable.

He'd left Ria a present also, something that he'd carried with him from London: William Blake's
Songs of Experience.
The slightly mad, mystic poet appealed to him in a way the romantics did not, but he treasured this particular volume because it had belonged to his mother. On the frontispiece, Blake had penned his name as a favor to the man who had meant for her to have it. West never considered that his own father might have been an admirer of Blake's bold, sometimes violent images, or that he had presented the book to his mother with any thought save to get her in his bed. Gifts like this one were rarely offered in penance of the grievous wrong he had done her, but as inducement that he be allowed to carry on without consequences.

That was not West's own purpose in presenting this book of verse to Ria; rather, he hoped she would appreciate that the well-thumbed copy was important to him and that the title made it apropos of their short acquaintance. There was some part of him that wished he could see her face when she unwrapped it and another part that was relieved he would not. If she was disappointed in his peace offering, he did not want to be witness to it.

Ria had not been wrong to name him a coward.

Chapter 9