How to Wed a Baron (16 page)

And she knew she was losing him, losing the arguments she could not believe she had brought to him in the first place. She had been all but begging him to marry her! Why did she feel frustration, but no shame? Was this what it was like to be a woman? Or was she a headstrong girl who simply could not hear the word
no
without trying to turn it to a
yes?

“You can't be right,” she told him fiercely. “We are two people, Justin, that's all. We're not simply the tools of our countries. That ceased to be the truth when you kissed me. All we have to do is start from here, from today. Yesterday doesn't matter.”

“And tomorrow may never come?” he asked her, his smile sad and knowing. “That was my argument to myself last night, but the clear light of morning showed me the error in my thinking. I've killed
men, Alina. For good reasons, for bad reasons, for no reason at all that I bothered to ask about before going off to put an end to their existence. I've done things no fine words or thoughts could reconcile with the actions of an honorable man, a soldier. For eight years, I was the Crown's assassin, as I attempted to procure a pardon for killing my man in a duel. Not for king and country, Alina, for myself, for my own selfish gain.”

Alina blinked at the tears stinging her eyes. Yes, she was losing him. Without ever having him, she was losing him. This time, forever. “But that's the past. The past is over.”

He shook his head slowly. “It's too late. Killing those men killed a part of me. I can't run from the truth of who and what I am, but I'll be damned if I'll make you a part of it.”

She wiped at her wet cheeks and threw back her head defiantly. “You can say those words to me ten thousand times, Justin, but I will never believe them. Until, someday, you don't believe them, either. You don't have to be the one to kill the
Inhaber.
If Francis wants him dead, he'll be dead. You're killing him to save me, when it is so obvious to me that you never want to kill again. You didn't have to shower me with your money and your property the way you have done. You never had to tell me about my uncle, who I am convinced was a coward and a fool. You never…you never had to stop last night when you
knew I was there for the taking. Justin Wilde is a good man. You're the only one who doesn't believe in him. But I do. And I'm not giving up on him until he learns that.”

She didn't run from him this time. She simply turned and left him there in the moonlight. Perhaps, she thought, the wise old man in the moon might shine down some wisdom on him….

MORNING CAME EARLY AFTER
a nearly sleepless night, and Justin left a hand-wringing Wigglesworth behind in the caravan to tend to Luka while he visited the stream to wash himself in the cold water before donning the clothes he'd been given.

He didn't shave (or allow Wigglesworth to shave him, which had something to do with the hand-wringing). He didn't brush his hair into its usual style after washing it in the stream, but only shook his head hard and then raked his fingers through the damp locks and let them settle where they would. He donned the black leather trousers and pulled on the soft, low-heeled black suede boots that ended just below his knees, and then tucked the full-sleeved white shirt into his waistband, buttoning all but three buttons, so that his shirt collar lay open. He wound the long red cloth around his waist twice, and then knotted it so that the fringed ends hung to his knees.

Lastly, he added an inferior but highly decorated
blade to his sash and slid his Spanish-made knife into his right boot.

When he reentered the camp, it was as Markos, and nobody looked at him a second time as he accepted a tin cup filled with hot coffee from one of the women before returning to the caravan. As he went, he saw that the oxen were being hitched to the caravans, and, indeed, two of the caravans had already left the camp, as he had asked. They were still too many, he thought, but he was also loath to give up more of the men who had sworn to protect Alina.

Luka was sitting up in his narrow bed, filling his face and his mustachios with chopped eggs, his trembling hands giving the lie to his insistence last evening that he was fine, and ready to take charge once more.

“The fever?” Justin asked Wigglesworth, just then adjusting his straggly wig over his “naked pate.”

“Still with us, I'm afraid, my—Markos. He says there is no time for it until we reach Basingstoke at the least, but the ball has to come out, and he needs medicine. One of the elders was here while you were gone, and he says he knows a surgeon in a town only a few miles from here. We're heading there as soon as the ladies have breakfasted.”

“It's not necessary,” Luka protested, nearly spilling the contents of his bowl as he sank back against the cushions behind him. “After Leipzig, I fought
on for a full week, chasing the Little Corporal back to France to harass him in his retreat, and all with a ball in my thigh.”

“How commendable,” Justin said, relieving the man of the bowl. “And if you were to succumb to this fever due to some overweening sense of honor or bravado, you'll die with the comfort of knowing there will be a fine statue of you erected in some quaint village square somewhere, for the pigeons to decorate with their usual flair.”

“Go to blazes, Wilde,” Luka said, and then winced as he tried and failed to sit up once more.

“Markos. I am Markos, remember? And you, my friend, are in no fit state to insult me. Now, tell me what the Romany do when they encounter a village? We'll take only this caravan into the town, I assume, and leave the others in some makeshift camp until we return?”

“No. This is a village they visit each time they come this way. They usually camp for the night and the villagers come to buy goods, to be entertained. It would be odd if they didn't stop, and cause more comment about my wound. Yet another reason to leave the ball where it is until we reach Basingstoke. It will only be two more days.”

“Yes, oxen don't move with the speed of horses, do they? My plan had been to alert you that the
Inhaber
still draws breath, and then leave you to carry on while I went on the hunt once more. Now I will
be delayed until you've reached not only Basingstoke, but Malvern. Lucas Paine is a good man, but he'll ask too many questions I don't care to answer. Tanner will simply ask what I want him to do, and then do it.”

“I still don't understand what happened yesterday. You said you tracked the
Inhaber
to some small inn. Why did you let him go?”

Justin saw a quick flash of the
Inhaber
as he ran from the inn, the two little girls clasped to him like living armor. “My vantage point wasn't one that pleased me. If I'd shot and missed, I would have destroyed any chance that he'd consider my offer.”

“Yes, the letter you gave to his henchman. You never said what it contains.”

“No, I didn't, did I? And now it's time we were on the road. Wigglesworth, your wig has slipped down over your ear. Have you, I wondered, considered a judicious application of glue?”

Leaving the major to stew, and Wigglesworth to ponder, Justin stepped outside the caravan to see Brutus standing with his legs wide and braced, his massive arms folded across his chest, staring at Stefan, who had been about to climb onto the box of the caravan taken over by Alina and her women.

“And a cheery good morning to you, Brutus. Is there a problem?”

“He won't let me pass,” Stefan said, pouting.
“Magdaléna wishes for me to drive her, as I did yesterday. I sing for her.”

“Like the proverbial angel, I'm sure,” Justin said, all smiles and affability. “However, unless you'd like to be able to join a real angels' chorus in the next two minutes, I suggest you find something to occupy you elsewhere. No, no, don't look at him,” he went on as the youth shifted his gaze to Brutus. “This is between you and me. I'd much rather we cried friends and moved on, but if you've a mind to be difficult, your difficulty rests with me.”

“It would not be a fair fight. You carry a knife,” Stefan accused.

“No, I carry two. Fighting fair, as you term it, is for those with no expectation of dying peacefully in their own beds after a long and fulfilling life. But, please, it's such a beautiful morning, and I am your guest. You agree to keep your distance from the girl, and I will allow you to keep the hand that dared to touch her.”

“You want her?” Stefan declared with amazing bravado. “I give her to you. Her and the oxen both. May you be in good voice.”

As the young Romany stomped off, Justin turned to Brutus. “And may I be in good voice? Is that some obscure Romany curse, do you think? That was stupid of me, baiting the boy like that. Unforgivable. It's never wise to make enemies, Brutus, remember that. This is where women will get you, if you allow
it. Puffing up and strutting, squawking discordantly, like a peacock out to intimidate his fellows in order to keep the peahen for himself.”

Brutus grunted and nodded before stepping aside so that Justin, noting that everyone else seemed ready to quit the camp, could mount the box behind the team of oxen.

Loiza, introduced to him last evening as the leader of this clan of Romany, stood in the clearing and waved his arms to the drivers, motioning for them to alternately, one by one, move out into a line.

Justin unwound the thick leather straps that served as reins from the large foot brake and looked out over the pair of broad backs. Releasing the brake, he flicked the reins as he would for a team of horses.

The oxen remained placidly standing there.

He couldn't be certain, but he thought they might be snoring.

Now here was a dilemma. He'd ridden any horse that could be ridden, driven any horse that could be driven. But he'd never sat up behind a pair of hulking great oxen who ignored him with such admirable panache.

Loiza shouted something to him in Romani, but Justin didn't understand. He saw the stout whip standing in its holder and picked it up, flicked it expertly just above the team's heads, a move that had no effect on them.

“I suppose I should tell you. Stefan sings to them,”
Alina said from behind him, and Justin turned to see that she'd opened the top half of a narrow door just behind his seat and was poking her head and shoulders through the opening. “He sang to them most all of the afternoon yesterday.”

May you be in good voice.

“So it
was
a curse.” Justin figuratively tipped his hat to Stefan, who was standing in the clearing, his smile so broad it nearly split his face in two. “Excuse me,” he said, setting the brake—probably an unnecessary precaution. “I believe I have some groveling to do.”

Several hours later, Justin sat on his horse and watched as the caravans formed a broken circle in the middle of a grassy field just far enough away from the market town of Farnham that the castle keep was only partially visible above the trees.

As soon as the last caravan was in place, the makeshift camp turned into a beehive of activity, everyone seeming to know what he or she was to do, including Alina, who apparently believed she would be accompanying Luka and Loiza into Farnham itself, to see the surgeon.

“No, you're staying here,” Justin told her, dismounting in front of the caravan just as she was about to climb its steps and go inside. “The major will be fine with Loiza. He told me he's been coming here twice a year for the past decade and more. Nobody
will think anything of seeing him. But you…stand out.”

Luka, who had managed to get to his feet, appeared in the doorway of the caravan to add his voice to Justin's, at which point all thought of conversation abruptly stopped. The man was clad in Romany garb, his right arm in a sling. Neither of these things was surprising. What was rather shocking was Luka's clean-shaven face.

“Luka! I would not have known you,” Alina exclaimed as he slowly made his way down the few built-in steps to the ground, Wigglesworth descending behind him and looking quite pleased with himself for having a hand in the major's transformation.

“Resigning from your king's army a little sooner than you'd thought, my friend?” Justin said, surprised to see how much younger the other man looked now that all those whiskers were gone.

Luka raised his hand and stroked at his cheeks and chin. “I would say I did it so as to further disguise myself, but in truth, I could not overcome a strong urge to prove to you that I do possess an upper lip,” he answered, suppressing a grin. “Lady Alina, the baron is correct. You must remain here, as we have no idea where…a certain person might be. But you're safe enough here. Perhaps you can help the women when the townspeople come to buy their wares.”

Alina looked ready to launch a protest, but then
merely shrugged her shoulders—wonderfully visible thanks to the fetching cut of her blouse. “At least I can watch over the children while the women work.”

Justin assisted the major to the waiting horse and helped him mount; the man had sworn he could ride without tumbling to the ground in a dead faint. “She pretends this is all a game, but she knows how serious the situation is, and she'll behave. She's had a considerable lot to deal with in these past few days, one way or another.”
No thanks to me,
he added silently.

Luka nodded his head. “She is her father's daughter. Perhaps even more determined. And fearless. All her concern yesterday was for you, with none reserved for herself. But you don't care, do you? We are not your friends, and the
Inhaber
is not your enemy. Your Prince Regent is the one you would destroy if you could, for his betrayal of you. Wigglesworth told me all about your supposed arrangement, believing he could gain my sympathy, and he did, to a point. You've been used badly, Justin Wilde, but you are not without blame. Now Lady Alina pays the price. And her every tear damns you to hell.”

Justin watched as Loiza led the way out of the camp, Luka behind him and with Stefan belatedly bringing up the rear, a rifle slung across his back.

Justin's hands balled into fists at his sides. He hadn't attempted to refute anything the major had
said because the man was right, straight down the line.

Except for one thing. He did care.

He cared very much.

 

A
LINA SAT ON A LOW STOOL
placed on the thick grass, surrounded by Romany children as well as other young ones who had come to the camp with their mothers.

All around them were the sounds of voices, some raised in song, some sharp with haggling, and much laughter in between. The whirr of the whetstone as one of the men worked the pedals as he sharpened knives brought to him from Farnham kitchens competed with the sound of a small hammer attacking the dents in a cooking pot.

She put the last few touches on her drawing of a sweet little cherub whose huge blue eyes had stared at her intently the entire time she'd been sketching him. “Here you are, sweetheart,” she said, tearing off the page and handing it to the child, who immediately squealed in delight and then ran to show his mother his new treasure. “Now, who's next?”

Justin leaned against one of the caravans, watching as a young boy missing several of his top teeth shot both hands into the air as he yelled, “Me, me! But with teeth, please? Mama promised I'd get more.”

Alina's clear laugh floated to Justin, washed over him, and he smiled.

She was so many different people, all wrapped up together to make her irresistible to him. The haughty Lady Alina, surveying her domain on the Portsmouth docks. The practical daughter who thought it perfectly understandable that she learn to shoot in order to protect her home from French invaders. The Romany Magdaléna, turning a plan to hide her from the
Inhaber
into a grand adventure. The insistent debater, throwing out arguments in order to get her own way.

The frightened, inquisitive girl, determined to become a woman.

Two more days, and he'd know if
Inhaber
Novak had taken the bait. Two more days, and he'd have his answer. He wasn't going to accompany Alina all the way to Malvern and the home of his friend Tanner Blake. That had been a lie, convenient to tell, necessary that everyone believe.

He would leave them all at Basingstoke and ride to Sandhurst, there to meet with one of the few other men he trusted with his life, and had done more than once during his years on the Continent.