How to Wed a Baron (11 page)

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “So I don't repulse you?”

Justin stopped on the brick path and turned her around to face him. She meant it, she really didn't
understand just how beautiful she was. “Repulse me? You thought that? Your country has no mirrors?”

She put the back of her hand to her mouth for a moment, as if sorry she'd let the words escape her, but quickly rallied. “What was I supposed to think? You all but ran out of my…my bedchamber at the inn, and then you rode off the next morning without so much as another word to me. I know I'm only a woman, but women can think, too, you know. And I think you behaved like a man who very much wished to be anywhere this woman wasn't.”

Justin threw back his head and laughed; a laugh so free and open he actually amazed himself, for he had guarded his emotions for too many long years. “God, you're adorable. No wonder your aunt wanted you gone.”

Alina rolled her eyes at this. “She considers me painfully young and gauche.”

“She considers you competition would be more to the point. But back to what we were discussing.”

“We weren't discussing anything,” Alina said testily. “You have been making pronouncements, for the most part, and very little sense for the rest of it. Fugitive or not, I don't think I want to marry you, and not because you say we won't. Our children would all be idiots.”

“Blithering, drooling idiots, yes, I agree, if that makes you happy. But you do realize that we would
then be flouting the wishes of two separate royal edicts.”

“Oh. And that's why you're a fugitive? You went to London and told your Prince Regent that you refuse to marry me. Will they hang you now?”

“If they catch me, that's the least they'll do, but not for the reason you think. So you really don't wish to marry me?”

She hesitated, as if searching for just the correct words to answer him. “You already don't wish to marry me, so what I might want or not want doesn't matter, does it? If you want, you can take me to my mother's family, and I'd promise not to ever be any bother to you.”

“Kitten, it's too late for that, as you bother me very much. The devil and the delight of it is that you don't seem to have any real understanding of just how and why you do.”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “There you go again, making absolutely no sense. I bedevil you, I delight you. You run from the sight of me, you come back again saying we must leave here and go somewhere safe, but you don't want to marry me. You say you're a fugitive and then you— Oh! I don't know
what
you're saying or doing.”

She had a temper. Good. Fearless, possibly reckless, and with a temper. If the gods had ordered up a woman for him, they could not have done better. Except that the gods also had a sense of humor, and
they had conjured her up for him knowing he would not be able to keep her. He put his hands on her slim shoulders. “All right, kitten—”

“I am not a kitten!”

“You're certainly not purring, I'll grant you that. I know you don't understand what I'm saying. I've barely begun to understand most of it myself, as even my mind isn't accustomed to running in such devious circles. But understand this, Alina. What I am
doing
is saving you from the man who is trying to kill you.”

“Kill me?” Her eyes went so wide it was almost laughable. “Who is it that's supposed to be killing me?”

He'd rather have gotten her full attention by kissing her. But then, Justin Wilde had long ago learned that one does not always get what one wishes for.

He walked her toward a nearby bench, sat her down, and proceeded to tell her everything he'd learned in London.

 

A
LINA'S HEAD WAS STILL
positively spinning as she stepped out of her tub and into the large white towel Tatiana held out for her to wrap herself in before moving to the fire so that one of the Ashurst maids could brush her hair dry.

“Thank you, but no,” she told the maid as she put out her hands for the brushes. “You may go now.”

“Sit, my lady,” Tatiana said, already going down
on her knees. “I'll do that for you, and you can tell me why you sent the maid away.”

Alina subsided onto the hearth carpet, sighing as Tatiana began working the brushes through her wet hair. “Danica isn't going to come walking in here, her ears flapping as they do when she tries to pretend she isn't listening, is she?”

“Not since I locked the door to the dressing room and hid the key in my pocket, my lady, no. Although when she's done packing up most of your belongings and discovers she's locked in there it might get a little noisy. I could see when you came upstairs that something was troubling you. Is it that his lordship has come back, or that he says we must leave this lovely place tomorrow morning?”

“It is lovely here, isn't it?” Alina said, knowing she was only delaying the inevitable. “If everyone in England is as friendly and kind as the duke and duchess, I will find it easier to be happy in a strange land. I wonder if the baron's estate is even half so pretty.”

“Is that where we're going, my lady? I thought we were bound for London.”

Alina tipped her head so that all her long, thick hair fell to one side. Tatiana lifted its bulk, fanning it out over her arm to catch the heat from the fire. “I don't know,” she said quietly. “There are so many things I don't know….”

Tatiana's hands stilled on the brushes. When she
spoke again, it wasn't the voice of the sweet, paid companion, but that of a woman who cared, and cared deeply. “He told you? The Englisher told you? The major said he might, once he'd come back. He should not have done that. He puts his nose where it does not belong. We would have kept you safe.”

Alina closed her eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath. Now, at last, she believed, really believed: someone wanted her dead, needed her dead. “Does everyone know but me? Does Danica know?”

Tatiana made a rude sound. “That one? What good is she? She knows nothing but laces and crimping irons and how to be annoying. What did his lordship tell you?”

Slowly, to be certain she had the right of it, Alina repeated all that Justin had told her.

She was, save her aunt, the last Valentin. Not that Aunt Mimi mattered, for she had already refused to help the Romany lay claim to the land disputed between them and
Inhaber
Novak. If anything happened to her niece, she would sign whatever documents the
Inhaber
put in front of her (for a fee, surely), revoking all possible claim to the land that her silly, romantic niece would just as surely have signed over to the Romany. But as her father's daughter, Alina stood first, and her aunt second. Eliminate the first, the second becomes first. It was that simple, Justin had told her as he held her hand, as he'd dabbed her damp cheeks with his handkerchief.
He'd been so sweet, so caring—how could he still insist he could not marry her?

Alina did not believe her aunt wished her dead or knew about the plot, but she also did not think the woman would go into mourning for her niece unless she could find a becoming wardrobe in black. She'd probably just ask for the return of the Valentin jewels, and then bury her niece with the garnets. Alina had said as much to Justin, and that had made him laugh.

But there was very little else to make either of them smile.

Everything about this business of the land was complex. Francis did not want to be forced to make the decision between the Romany claim and Novak's claim. But she understood that; the man had many problems.

After that, complex rapidly became murky. The king wanted the
Inhaber
dead, out of his way, for reasons that most probably went beyond the matter of some disputed land. So the English Prince Regent had agreed to welcome Novak to England, and then have him assassinated by Justin Wilde, the husband who was, after all, only protecting his wife and himself, since a wife's possessions automatically became the possessions of the husband.

“And this killing of the
Inhaber
would have taken place in far-off England, with no hint of blame or conspiracy falling on King Francis?” she'd asked
Justin, thinking perhaps she at last understood the impossible to understand. “And that's the reason why you will be a fugitive? Your Prince Regent has agreed to make you into a murderer, hasn't he?”

He'd agreed that she was correct.

And she'd known he had just lied to her. She felt certain—no, the look on Justin's face had told her—that there was more, but that the entire truth would have to wait for another day. She had already begun a mental list of questions for the moment that day arrived. Beginning with
why you, Justin? Why did the Prince Regent, of all the men in England, choose you?

“Those weren't highwaymen that attacked our coaches, Tatiana,” she said now, willing herself to relax as the companion went back to brushing her hair for her. “They were sent by
Inhaber
Novak. And you knew that, Luka knew that. Everyone knew that except me. That's why we have to leave here, because his lordship doesn't want his friends put in any danger, to which I certainly agree. But I don't know where we're going, because he won't tell me.”

“Does
he
know?”

Alina turned about so quickly, one of the brushes caught in her hair. “Do you think he doesn't? That he'd planned to leave me here with Luka, all unknowing, until I told him about the attack on the road? Do you think he is just taking us away now,
without a destination in his mind? But that would be…”

“Yes?” the companion prompted.

“That would be something he might do,” Alina admitted, thinking of the man she had only just barely begun to know, if at all. “I don't think he planned to go to London and confront his Prince Regent, but he did it once he'd figured out that he was to play the role of dupe, as he termed it, in all of this. He probably was very angry, and said terrible things to the Prince Regent. Mostly, I think he was showing off. He's a very strange man, Tatiana. And now he's a fugitive, an outlaw.”

“The major trusts him.”

“Luka is in bed with a wounded shoulder and is all but useless. He has little choice but to trust someone else. He told me as much when I went to see him earlier and demanded that he tell me the entire truth.” She took Tatiana's hands in hers. “How did this happen? How did I go from silly girl to silly woman to a woman marked for death, all without noticing?”

“You were busy ordering bride clothes, my lady.”

“Please, don't remind me of just how shallow and silly I have been. Do you know what I should do? I should return home and fight for the land. I may not have much Romany blood, but it would be my honor to give the land to them and confound the
Inhaber.
And the king as well, I suppose. Is it very much land, do you know?”

Tatiana shrugged. “I don't know, but it is not important, my lady. It isn't the land the Romany want, it's the having it. If the
Inhaber
dies and you were to live, then yours is the only claim. The king would be forced to honor it. And the
Inhaber
deserves to die, for so many reasons. That is why the major has allowed any of this. His lordship sticking his nose where it has no place to be is making things difficult for all of us.”

“I won't tell him that,” Alina said, sighing. “It would only make him happy, I'm sure. And still I'm left asking—where will he take me?”

“That I do not know, my lady. I do know
how
he will take you. We who care for you did not arrive on these shores unprepared to protect you. We simply could not know that your bothersome betrothed would not take you straight to London. But that's all been fixed, and we are ready now.”

Alina looked at her companion blankly, only smiling after the woman had begun her explanation.

C
HARLOTTE
D
AUGHTRY HAD
been so kind and so very welcoming these past days. She hadn't so much as blinked when Alina arrived covered in mud, as if visitors came to her door every day in that same sorry condition.

What Alina saw in the duchess was not simply a beautiful woman, but a very practical one, the sort who managed everyone around her without making anyone
feel
managed. Her husband, the duke, obviously adored her, as did all of the servants.

And if there was one thing Alina knew, it was that you could not fool the servants. They were the ones who saw you most, and at your most vulnerable. Anyone could manage to be polite and friendly in company. It was behind closed doors that the real person was revealed.

She'd also observed Charlotte with her son, one of the sweetest infants she'd ever seen, and one of the most fortunate. Little Rafael Fitzpatrick Daughtry had his mother's soft eyes and his father's determined chin, and he seemed to smile all the time.
Alina had caught herself wondering how the product of a mix of her and Justin Wilde would look, and then quickly had banished the thought because first, well, first they'd have to…do that.

Except that this afternoon, when Justin had sat so close to her, and he'd looked at her in that strange way, and even as he told her things she found difficult to believe, she'd found herself half hoping he'd kiss her. And those parts of her that had slumbered for so long had stirred yet again. It was all very…interesting. She'd found herself watching his hands tonight at dinner, how they held a glass, how he used them when speaking. She watched his mouth, the slight upturn of his lips when he was genuinely amused. Her breath had caught in her throat when a lock of that dark hair had dared to fall forward onto his smooth forehead, and he'd casually brushed it back with his spread fingers…wondering what he would do if she copied his gesture when they were alone.

“You seem distracted, my dear,” Charlotte whispered as she pretended to be admiring the embroidery on the sleeve of Alina's gown as they returned to the drawing room after a relaxed and delicious dinner. “Are you nervous now that Justin has returned? He's harmless, or so says Rafe's sister Lydia, who knows him much better than I. Although, from everything I've heard about him, I'm frankly surprised that he'd agree to an arranged marriage, no matter if the king
himself had asked it of him. That doesn't seem anything like him, especially after his first marriage, which Rafe tells me was disastrous.”

Alina shot a quick, involuntary look toward the two men standing in front of the mantelpiece, sharing drinks and conversation. “His first marriage, you said?”

Charlotte took her new friend's hand and led her to a lovely flowered couch, urging her to sit down. Which Alina did, although she was faintly surprised that her suddenly stiff legs remained capable of bending at the knees. “Oh, Alina, I'm so sorry. I should have realized you might not know. But it was all very long ago, almost ten years, I believe. You stay here, and I'll go fetch you a glass of wine. You're terribly pale.”

Alina nodded, her gaze still on Justin. She told herself she didn't care, that a marriage that was no longer a marriage was no concern of hers. Just as she'd told herself that it didn't matter that Baron Wilde was such an arresting figure, so very handsome. And clean, and young, and as prospective husbands went, probably a most wonderful catch. If she'd been looking for a husband, which she hadn't been. But since being presented with him, she'd fairly well accepted him as such…right up until the moment he'd announced that there would be no marriage.

Could he really decide that on his own, when
the announcement of their upcoming nuptials had already been made in Francis's court? The banns had been read in church for the third time only two days before she had begun her journey to England.

She probably ought to tell him that. Tell him that, at least in her country, they were already as good as married. Or would that make her seem a pathetic creature?

What he'd done was to put her in some sort of Limbo; that's what he'd done when he'd announced they would not marry. And told the Prince Regent as much, if he could be believed. She'd left her home an affianced bride, and landed in England only to be rejected by her affianced husband.

It was all so humiliating.

For some reason, one she didn't care to delve into too deeply, or else she would look more foolish than she already believed herself to be, this unforeseen development upset her more than the thought that
Inhaber
Novak wanted her dead.

And now to learn that Justin had been married before? What would be next? Did he have an entire gaggle of children hidden away somewhere she wasn't going to know about, either?

“Here you are, dear,” Charlotte said, handing her a glass as she sat down beside her. “I was cudgeling my brain as I was pouring your glass, and I'm afraid I cannot remember much of what Rafe told me about Justin's marriage. She had an accident of
some sort while Justin was on the Continent. Really, it's nothing to concern you. I shouldn't have mentioned it at all. He'll tell you everything in his own time. After all, you've barely met, haven't you? Truth to tell, I find it disturbingly medieval that you two should be all but ordered to wed each other in the first place. And if Rafe heard me say any of what I've just said, he'd remind me that none of this is any of my business.”

Alina smiled. “No, I think you're correct. It's very strange. I had thought only royal princes and princesses were married off to strangers for the sake of some government alliance. But I was given a choice—my aunt was very specific about that. It's my decision to be here.” She looked over at Justin again, still deep in conversation with the duke. “I don't know why his lordship agreed.”

“And I don't know why I'm continuing to tell tales, but I am. According to Tanner, Lydia's husband, the Prince Regent has some sort of control over Justin. What sort of control I don't know, but it would seem that in order to remain in England, Justin has to do whatever the Prince Regent requires of him. He's only recently returned, you know—or perhaps you don't—after living abroad even since before his wife died, even throughout the war with France. I really should pay more attention, but as I always profess to abhor gossip, I try not to listen
too
well when people tell me things, or at least to forget
them as soon as I'm told. Ah, and here's the tea tray. Thank you, Grayson.”

As Charlotte went about the business of pouring tea, Alina sat very still, digesting all of this. So that was why he'd gone to London. To inform His Royal Majesty that he would no longer obey him. And that was why he'd called himself a fugitive. It had nothing to do with her, or whether or not it would be so horrible for him to marry her. Here she'd been, thinking herself repulsive to him in some way. Too young, too silly, too foreign—something. And all the time, as she'd variously worried, fretted and considered wreaking mayhem on the man, it hadn't been her at all. It had been Justin's private problems with the Prince Regent that had sent him haring off to London.

There were a few things she knew—very few. There were a few more things she'd guessed, rightly or wrongly. It had never occurred to her that she was no more than a convenient reason for Justin to go to the man and, in the words she'd overheard one day from one of the grooms, tell His Royal Highness to
bugger off.

He was either very brave, or the most foolish, dangerous man in creation.

Alina put her hand to her mouth and pretended a huge yawn. “Oh, I'm so sorry, Charlotte. I can't seem to keep my eyes open. Would you mind terribly if I excused myself and went upstairs? I've already
been warned that we're making a very early start in the morning.”

Charlotte rose at once, announcing that Alina would be leaving them, and the two men immediately joined them to say their good-nights.

“It has been our pleasure to have you here, my dear. I won't see you in the morning before you go, I'm afraid,” the duke told her, and then surprised her by kissing her on the cheek. “I know this man. He'll let no harm come to you,” he whispered softly before stepping back.

Alina smiled her thanks and had already turned toward the foyer when Justin took her hand and threaded her arm through his. “You look rather pale. Wrestling with kittens has fatigued you?”

“Wrestling with many things has fatigued me,” she countered as they stopped in the foyer and she reluctantly withdrew her arm. “But I am confident that I shall find answers to all that troubles me very soon. In fact, I'm convinced of it. Until we meet again, my lord, good night.”

She ascended the first few steps sedately, but once she was sure Justin had returned to the drawing room, she hiked up her skirts and raced to her bedchamber, for once praying that Danica was waiting to help her into her nightclothes. After all, the sooner she was thought to be safely tucked up in bed, the sooner she would see Danica's disapproving back following her pimple-dotted front toward the door.

“Is that the best I've got, out of all these trunks of clothes?” she asked almost plaintively a few minutes later as she stood in the middle of the room, stripped to her chemise, and looked at the same night rail she'd worn that first evening in Portsmouth.

“I can only lay out what is there to lay out, my lady. It is you who chose to think only of how you could impress everyone with your fine gowns.”

Alina made a face as the chemise fell away and she immediately became half-buried in yards of aged white muslin dropped over her head by the dresser. She had to fight her way free, shoving her arms into the sleeves that covered her past her wrists, and then stepped back as Danica went to close the dozen or more front buttons that would cover her almost halfway up her neck.

“Thank you, that will be all,” she said, covering yet another feigned yawn. “I'll wear the rose tomorrow to travel, Danica.”

“You'll wear the blue. Everything else is packed.”

“But…but the blue was ruined in the mud.”

“A few stains, here and there, but good enough to ride in a coach, bad enough to not suffer too much if you see a puddle you might wish to jump up and down in…my lady.”

“Danica, you're impertinent, do you know that?” Alina wanted the woman gone, not just from her bedchamber at this moment, but from her life, her
employ. “And clearly you are unhappy here. Perhaps you should return home. I am certain his lordship can arrange suitable transport.”

The dresser didn't burst into tears, nor did she throw herself at Alina's feet and beg for her position, but her stern face did take on a faintly wounded expression. “This is how I'm thanked for leaving my homeland in order to serve the daughter of the good and kind General Leopold Valentin, so beloved of his countrymen, so mourned upon his death at the hands of the outlaw Bonaparte, so—”

“Oh, Danica,” Alina exclaimed in a horror of remorse, clasping the unbending woman to her. “I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”

Danica took hold of Alina's shoulders and sternly put her at arm's length, her hatchet face once more implacable. “
Gut.
Good. Then that is settled, you have apologized as you should, and we will speak no more of this. You will wear the blue.”

“Uh…yes?” Alina said, caught between surprise and an insane urge to laugh. “I will wear the blue. Most definitely. I can't imagine why I thought otherwise. I'll braid my hair myself—you just go to bed now. Good night, Danica.”

Once the woman was gone, Alina stripped off the offending night rail and climbed back into her chemise, which at least didn't button to her chin, and then wrapped herself in the ermine-tipped cloak already laid out for the morning chill.

Before she could reflect too much over what she was about to do, she then opened the door to the hallway, stuck her head out far enough to be certain she would not be observed, and then raced on bare tiptoes down the length of the corridor before entering Justin's chamber, closing the door and flattening her back against it to catch her breath. She'd made it!

And then she very nearly leapt out of her skin when Justin spoke to her.

“You were somehow detained? I'd expected you a full ten minutes ago, and was just now feeling I'd misjudged you. How gratifying to see that I haven't. You're as foolish as you are brave.”

The silky voice had come from somewhere in the dimness lightened by only a few candles. “And looking quite fetching, I might add,” Justin said as he stepped forward, making himself visible in the candlelight.

“You knew I'd come? You've been waiting for me?” Alina shook her head at her own foolishness. “Yes, of course you did, of course you are. Now I feel foolish and…predictable.”

Justin took her arm and led her toward the fire and the pair of facing leather wingback chairs that were much like the pair in her own chamber. As she'd already decided these chairs were less than comfortable, she sank to her haunches on the hearth rug, the cloak forming a velvet puddle around her.

Justin looked toward one of the chairs, and then shrugged his shoulders as if to say why should he be any different than his guest, at which point he also lowered himself to the floor, still holding a snifter of brandy delicately in one hand. He looked…magnificent. Without his evening jacket, with his shirtsleeves hanging loosely, the neat ruffling of his cuffs tickling at the backs of his hands, with his neckcloth gone and his waistcoat undone, he managed to look both wonderfully groomed and approachable. Human.

She should remember that he was probably neither.

“How did you know I'd come to see you?”

“I couldn't be certain,” he told her, swirling the brandy in the snifter. She felt her eyes drawn to it, losing herself in its honeyed highlights. “If you hadn't, I would have found my way to your chamber. Charlotte, you see, apologized to me after you'd gone. She believes she may have been indiscreet.”