Martha Schroeder (14 page)

“Pray continue to concentrate on what is important,” she replied. “I do not need to be entertained.”

“Entertained? My dear Miss Forrester, how can you—

“Do you know,” Jane interrupted, “whenever you call me your dear Miss Forrester, I know you are about to say something truly insipid.”

“Insipid!” He was clearly incensed. No one had ever dared to call the dashing Colonel Sir Richard Sinclair insipid. It was a word reserved for particularly boring milk-and-water debutantes whose conversation was limited to monosyllables.

“I meant that you always have some idiotish social stricture to give me on my conduct. And now I collect you are going to tell me that the art of conversation is one that gently bred females must cultivate above all others. Particularly gently bred females with no pretense to beauty or wealth.” She had not meant the last words to sound bitter, but he turned to her and she awaited some set-down for her rudeness.

“Who told you that you were not beautiful?”

Jane gave him a sardonic smile. “My looking glass.”

“No, it is an idea someone put into your head. No one who saw the way gentlemen looked at you the other night when Lady Amelia had you dressed like Christmas beef could possibly think such a thing.” His eyes never left the road, and his hands were steady on the ribbons as his two matched bays trotted briskly through the evening. But his attention was on her. “Who told you that?” he repeated.

Jane sat stunned into silence. It had never occurred to her that the dress and the coiffure Amelia had insisted on had done anything more than make her appearance acceptable to Society.

“You refuse to answer, Miss Forrester?”

“You are being willfully obtuse, Sir Richard. Your question does not require an answer.” Jane sat up straighter and stared into the night.

“Yet I want one.” His voice had deepened, softened yet he still did not look at her.

She took a deep breath, somehow compelled to respond. She almost believed it was a genuine question. “I have always known what my gifts were and what they were not. I manage well. I have managed people and money since I was thirteen years old. When my parents no longer needed me, I decided to teach, to use those talents for good.”

“I would never argue that you are not a manager and teacher par excellence,” he said. “But that wasn’t my question. I want to know why you seem not to know how—well, for lack of a better word, let us say how striking you are.”

“My parents were both artists, Sir Richard. I grew up from my earliest years knowing what beauty was. I saw it all around me. I knew I had none.”

He shook his head. “I can see that nothing I say will disabuse you of that notion. Have you never felt a desire to have a life that had more warmth, more personal affection in it?”

“Have you?” she challenged, goaded beyond endurance. Who was this odious aristocrat to tell her she was not as plain as she thought and then criticize her choices in life? “Aside from your regiment and your army friends and colleagues, who is there in your life to provide you with—how did you characterize it?—warmth and personal affection?”

“You are angry with me.” He did not sound particularly perturbed. “I will tell you. I, too, have no one. It is a trait I share with Gideon Falconer. Oh, I have a family, but it is a singularly unhappy one. And the reason they are unhappy is that I have survived my betters. So I stay away from my home and have done my best for almost twenty years to get myself killed as expeditiously as possible. But fate has decreed that while I have survived an enemy who bent every effort to cut me to ribbons, my older brother and my brother’s child have met with untimely deaths in the peaceful English countryside.”

As he spoke, the pain and bitterness in his voice grew, and Jane could see a muscle in his jaw work spasmodically. She reached out and laid her hand on his arm.

“I am sorry. I did not mean to bring up a subject so painful to you.”

His smile was more of a grimace. “Nor I you. I did not mean to offend you, Miss Forrester. It surprises me that one with your obvious intelligence and beauty has never even thought of marriage.” For a moment he took his eyes off the road and smiled into her eyes.

Again, he had shocked her into truthfulness. “Oh, I spent a good part of my girlhood thinking of very little else. But it was borne in upon me that girls with no fortune other than what their brains could cam tor them would do much better to aim at a life of useful service.”

“As it was borne in upon me that the less my family saw of me, the happier they would all be.”

“Why? What makes an officer in His Majesty’s forces such an unworthy heir?” She removed her hand and folded it decorously in her lap.

“I wish you would not take your hand away,” he said. To her surprise, Jane found she missed touching him, and she put it back.

“Thank you.” His voice warmed for a moment. “To answer your question, it is not that I am unworthy of being the heir of the Marquess of Southbridge. It is that the others were supremely worthy—charming, warm, handsome, able to summon all the qualities necessary for the task of running enormous estates and keeping a large staff’ and fractious family in line. I have been told that I am conspicuously lacking in all of them. I do not even resemble them. They were dark and handsome, while I am the sandy one without conspicuous qualities of any sort.”

Jane smiled. “You could hardly lead men into battle if you were not gifted with qualities of leadership and courage. But I thought you said your brother’s little boy died. How could anyone tell if a child was able to command the respect and affection required?”

Sir Richard was silent for so long that Jane thought he was not going to answer her question. Then, at last, he said, “Francis was the apple of everyone’s eye. After his death a number of legends grew up around him.”

“Legends?” Jane had no idea what he was talking about. “That sounds most unusual.”

“He was an unusual child, very bright and courageous and charming. But I think that if he had died of an illness or an accident that people had seen occur, he would not have been so idolized. But he disappeared, you see, and no trace of him was ever found.”

“How could that be? He must have had nurses, governesses, a whole host of people to look after him. And he just vanished?”

“So it would seem. It was twenty years ago. I was up at Oxford, so I do not know exactly what occurred. No one saw, it appeared. Francis was outside playing with a group of children, and he went down near the river that runs through our property to chase a ball or some such.”

“And?” Jane was growing impatient. He had started telling her this tale. The least he could do was finish it without making her drag every detail out of his mouth.

“And he vanished. They searched high and low for him, of course, but no trace of him was found. I think everyone assumed he drowned, although the river was not abnormally swift at the time and his body was never found.”

“How dreadful. Nothing could be worse than that. The uncertainty must be unbearable.” Jane’s ready sympathy for those in pain or difficulty of any kind went out to little Francis’s mother.

“His mother still refuses to believe he is dead. She is certain that one day he will be returned to her.”

Once again, Sir Richard turned to look at Jane, and the bleak expression in his eyes touched her.

“How unbearably sad. You said your brother is dead, too. She must be very unhappy. And you as well. Were you and your brother close. Sir Richard?”

“Do you think it would be possible for you to call me Richard? I have told you more about my life and my family than I have said to anyone for years. I would feel much less foolish about having done so if we were truly friends.” Gathering the reins in one hand, he laid the other over hers. “Please, Jane? As a friend?”

“Very well... Richard.” The word rolled off her tongue as if she had been using it forever.

That Rubicon having been crossed, Jane felt suddenly shy. She had a large number of male acquaintances, men she knew from her work. But she realized suddenly that she had no real men friends. Yet somehow this trip through the frozen night toward some unknown danger had made this difficult, sardonic man her friend.

To Jane friendship was a sacred thing, and she intended to be Richard Sinclair’s friend in word and deed. But she knew she did not belong to his world and indeed understood very little about it. She numbered several titled gentlemen among her acquaintance, but she did not know them well. However, what she had seen of them made her certain that friendship with any of them would have been impossible.

She was not certain what set Richard Sinclair apart, but she felt that their view of the world was not so different. They had both seen a great deal of the sordidness of life. And she felt that, like her, he nevertheless did not despair. They shared the fundamentals, and though all the accidents of life—gender, wealth, circumstances—separated them, those fundamentals allowed them to be friends.

“I would be proud to be considered your friend,” she said, formally setting the seal on their new relationship.

“Thank you. I share the sentiment.” Silence grew between them until at last Richard said, “I think we are within a few miles of Doncaster Abbey. What do you say we spring ’em, I think they still have plenty of heart.”

“Whatever you say,” Jane agreed, and felt a twinge of regret when he released her hand so that he could take a firm grip on the reins.

Chapter Eleven

Blakeley was not as unobservant as Gideon and Amelia hoped. This time he brought a covered lantern with him. When he entered, he looked at the pair of prisoners standing in the middle of the room and narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, my, wot ’ave our little mice been doin’ while the cat’s been away?” That awful note of false jocularity scraped at Amelia’s nerves, but with Gideon’s warm hand in hers, she plucked up her courage, raised her chin and looked their captor in the eye.

“Come on, now, tell old Uncle Jos all about our little plan, wotever it was.” He crept closer, careful to keep his back to the wall. The lantern light wavered in the darkness, but Blakeley could see the ruin of the cot.

“Ah, ’ere we are. Your secret’s out, my pretties. Better tell me wot you been doin’ wit’ this. Got too excited, did you, Captain? Wore the young lady out, did you?”

Amelia could feel Gideon’s hand clench in hers, but he said nothing. Blakeley crept closer to the window. Another step or two, and his boots would crunch on the broken glass.

“He and I are going to be married. We can do whatever we wish,” Amelia said, trying to gel Blakeley’s attention.

“You ain’t marryin’ nobody but ’Is Grace.” Blakeley had stopped at her words and turned to face her.

“It is a little late to try to save me for my cousin,” Amelia said with as much careless confidence as she could muster. “I am betrothed to Captain Falconer.”

“Now, now. No argufyin’. You’re marryin’ the duke and turnin’ over all that lovely brass from your dear departed pa to ’im. And then ’e’s turnin’ it over to me.” Blakeley grinned and stepped away from the wall, moving toward Gideon and Amelia in the middle of the room. She breathed a sigh. So far they were safe. If she could only keep the odious man talking, maybe Gideon could think of something they could do to escape.

“You cannot force me to marry him. Especially not now that I am—unchaste.” Amelia lowered her eyes, trying to look as if she were crying.

“My darling,” Gideon said, squeezing her hand tightly, “you cannot convince this ruffian of anything. But I am sure that the duke will understand that our love cannot be denied. He will let you go.”

Blakeley stared at the two of them, then slowly began to applaud. “Better than a play, you two are. But you can forget all about it ’acos I don’t care nothin’ about true love. And neither does ’Is Grace.”

He moved a little toward the cot and stared down at it. Seizing the moment, Gideon dropped Amelia’s hand and moved like lightning toward Blakeley. He had almost reached the other man when Blakeley’s head and hand came up in the same instant.

“Step back, Captain Bleedin’ Falconer.” The gun gleamed in the flickering lamplight.

Gideon looked at it, at Blakeley, calculated his chances, and retreated to where Amelia stood, silent and fearful.

“Good,” said Blakeley. “Now what ‘ave you two been up to? This ‘ere cot don’t look like it’s been used for sport—

Before he could finish the thought, his foot crunched on the broken glass from the window above the cot. “Ah,” he said, looking up for a brief moment before he turned once again to Gideon. “So we’ve broken the window, ’ave we?” Again, that jocular tone. Amelia shivered, and Gideon drew her to his side for a moment before letting her go. She felt bereft of warmth and comfort, but knew that he needed to keep his hands free should the chance come to take Blakeley.

“Well, well,” Blakeley went on, “I am afeared that we’re goin’ to have to tie you up so’s you don’t go getting into any more mischief before ’Is Grace arrives.”

He gave a sharp whistle, and after a moment Sidley shuffled in the door. It was a very different Sidley from the one Amelia once knew. This Sidley hung his head and refused to look either Gideon or her in the eye. He nodded to Blakeley when told to fetch rope and tie the two prisoners up. Then he sidled out the door again.

Amelia was too shocked to speak. What had happened to the bluff, hearty man who had given her pony rides and shown her where the new litters of barn cats were to be found? This sneaky, hangdog man was not Sidley. She glanced at Gideon, but his face evidenced none of the shock she felt. For some reason, that made her feel better. Whatever was wrong, Gideon thought he could handle it.

She tried to think of some way to ask Gideon what they could do without being overheard by Blakeley, but she could think of nothing. Sidley returned and managed to tie her up without once looking at her. He finished with Gideon, and then as he turned to leave, he gave them both one long look and Amelia’s heart raced with sudden hope.

The Hugh Sidley who had looked into her eyes was her old friend, not the cringing lackey who had entered the room. If he could help them he would, she was sure. Flexing her wrists, Amelia found that though the bonds looked tight, they gave her room to move her hands and arms. Perhaps enough room to escape.