The Misguided Matchmaker (7 page)

“
Was
my code name. I retired from my unsavory profession once Bonaparte was
dispatched to Elba. This past year I have served on Lord Wellington’s staff in
Paris and as Lord Castlereagh’s aide at the Congress of Vienna.” He frowned.
“And that is something, which at present I heartily regret. My face and
reputation are known to too many Bonapartists in prominent places, including
the infamous Citizen Fouché, who has sworn to have my head. I fear your father
could have made a wiser choice of escorts for you.”

Wiser
perhaps, Maddy thought, but not nearly as exciting. Tristan Thibault might be
moody and bad-tempered most of the time, but she doubted he would ever bore
her—something every other man she had known had managed to do within half an
hour of meeting him. She smiled. “It seems we have something else in common
besides a distrust of the Bourbons. Fouché was a sworn enemy of my grandfather
and I have probably inherited his hatred.”

Tristan
frowned. “All the more reason why we should put France behind us with all
possible haste.” Tossing aside his blade of grass, he rose to his feet. With a
curse for the cassock that once again tangled about his legs, he strode the few
steps to the grazing nag.

“Hurry
up and get in the carriage,” he demanded in a voice sharp with impatience as he
slipped the harness over the horse’s head. “We have tarried here far too long
thanks to your everlasting questions. We need to put some miles behind us
before we’re forced to take shelter from that storm gathering in the north.”

She
could see he was regretting having confided so much about his colorful past and
angry with himself for letting her questions plague him into doing so. His
black brows drew together in a scowl fierce enough to send anyone in his path
scampering in fright.

Anyone
but her, that is. After fifteen years with her grandfather, she defied anyone,
including this contentious Englishman, to try to intimidate her with a fit of
temper.

At
her own pace, she wrapped the remaining bread and cheese in the huckaback
toweling Father Bertrand’s housekeeper had provided. At her own pace, she
walked to the carriage and settled herself beside her companion. “You may
proceed now, Father Tristan,” she said calmly and earned herself a muttered
obscenity that could have curled the tail of a Paris gutter rat.

She
merely folded her hands in her lap and ignored him. If she had learned anything
while living with Grandpère, it was that one should always begin a new
connection as one meant to go on.

Tristan
wasn’t certain exactly how he had expected Maddy to react to his confessions of
his illegitimacy and his former profession, but her calm acceptance caught him
by surprise. She neither questioned him further nor commented on what he had
already divulged. In truth, she said no more than a dozen words for the balance
of the long afternoon. Still, the silence that stretched between them was oddly
companionable, almost as if they were old friends rather than merely two
strangers thrown together by a whim of fate.

For
the first two hours after their stop they traveled through orchard country.
Mile upon mile of glorious pink apple blossoms and snowy plum blossoms lined
both sides of the narrow road, and with the rising wind whipping through the
trees, the carriage was soon awash with their silken petals. He watched them
settle onto Maddy’s dark curls and smiled to himself at his fanciful turn of
thought when he likened them to tiny pink and white butterflies.

Eventually,
the orchards gave way to lush, green meadows dotted with grazing sheep that reminded
him all too keenly of the small holding in Suffolk that Garth had once promised
him. He doubted it would ever be his now. With Caleb Harcourt holding the purse
strings, Garth would be in no position to be so generous to his illegitimate
brother.

One
of the fields was being plowed for spring planting, and the peasant farmer
removed his hat and bowed as their carriage approached. “You must make the sign
of the cross, Father,” Maddy whispered. “He expects you to bless his planting.”
Tristan dutifully signed, relieved that his disguise seemed authentic enough to
fool a believer,
then
crossed himself again for good
measure. He was not a superstitious man, but he winged a silent apology to the
papist God for his heresy just in case.

With
each mile they traveled northward, the clouds grew darker and the wind stronger
until at dusk Tristan felt the first drops of rain spatter against his cheeks.
Night would soon be upon them. He was tired and hungry and though she made no
complaint, Maddy looked near exhaustion. But search as he might, he could see
no sign of an inn or posting house ahead.

Within
moments, the rain started coming down in earnest and driven by the wind,
pricked Tristan’s face like hundreds of needles. Maddy’s curls were soon
plastered to her head and water dripped of her chin. Her coarse peasant’s shirt
clung to her in places that plainly revealed she was anything but the boy she
pretended to be, and Tristan’s reaction to the bewitching sight was most
definitely not that of a priest. As much in self-defense as concern for her, he
pulled her jacket from beneath the seat and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“We’re
going to have to find shelter,” he said quickly to hide his frustration.
Moments later he pointed to a group of farm buildings on the distant horizon.
“It will be dark by the time we reach there. We should be able to sleep in the
barn with no one the wiser if we rise before dawn.”

“Sleep
in the barn?” Maddy blinked. He expected her to spend the night alone with him
in a hayloft? She doubted that even a parent as careless as her father would
condone such sleeping arrangements. She gave him a quelling look. “For the sake
of propriety, if nothing else, I believe we should find a respectable inn,
monsieur.”

“I
can think of nothing I’d like better than a comfortable featherbed and a hot
meal,” he agreed. “If you can guarantee we shall find such accommodations
within the next mile, which I gauge to be our trusty steed’s limit of
endurance, I shall gladly seek it out.”

“You
know very well I cannot.”

He
shrugged. “Then I am afraid you will have to be content with a pile of straw
and another meal of bread and cheese.”

As
he’d predicted, darkness had fallen by the time they pulled into the barnyard
of the neat little farm. A glimmer of candlelight shone through the narrow
windows of the small stone farmhouse, but the sturdy stone and timber barn
stood far enough from the house to ensure no one would be aware of their
furtive arrival.

Tristan
guided the old dobbin to a sheltered spot beneath the eaves of the barn,
released it from the carriage and tied it to a handy hitching post. “Rest, old
fellow; you’ve earned it,” he said, and promising to return later with water
and feed, opened the barn door and stepped aside to let Maddy enter ahead of
him.

Closing
the door behind them, he struck one of the flints Father Bertrand’s housekeeper
had provided and lit the lantern he’d carried from the carriage. To his relief,
the barn was as clean and tidy as the rest of the farm. Every tool was hung in
place, every animal bedded down for the night; even the barn cat and her litter
of kittens were settled in a basket just inside the door.

Bales
of newly mown hay and burlap sacks filled with grain were stacked between the
center posts, and two milk cows and a huge, gray draft horse that whinnied his
annoyance at their entrance occupied three of the animal stalls. The fourth was
empty, but fresh straw had been spread on the dirt floor.

Tristan
breathed in the pungent odor of warm animal bodies and fresh manure, and
memories surfaced of a long-ago night when Garth and he had stolen from their
beds to watch the birth of a spring foal in the Winterhaven stables.

Long
after the foal had stood up on its wobbly legs and searched out its mother’s
tit, the two of them had lain side by side in the loft and told each other
their dreams of the future. Even then Garth had dreamed of Sarah and the life
they would one day share at Winterhaven.

What
strange, unexpected twists their fates had taken, and how few of the dreams
they had shared would ever come true. For now Maddy Harcourt, not Sarah
Summerhill would be Garth’s wife and the mother of his children, and it was
love of Winterhaven, not a woman, that would lead him to the altar.

Tristan
lowered his gaze to the young woman who knelt beside the purring tabby,
cuddling one of the kittens. Her teeth were chattering, but not a word of
complaint did she utter. Whatever else she might be, Maddy Harcourt was a woman
of spirit; she would not disgrace the title of Countess of Rand. To his surprise,
he found himself hoping she would even find some happiness in the marriage her
father had purchased for her.

But
Maddy Harcourt’s happiness was not
his
problem. It was Garth who was
destined to wed her, and while he could not rejoice in the union, Tristan had
vowed to carry out his part of the plan to save the Ramsdens’ estates. It was
the least he could do, considering all he owed them.

In
the meantime, he intended to put the best possible face on a situation he could
see was utterly bewildering to his young companion. “It’s a fine barn,” he said
with a cheerfulness that sounded false even to his own ears. “We could do worse
for a night’s lodging.”

He
raised his eyes to search out the loft, and breathed a sigh of relief. There
was plenty of room between it and the ceiling of the barn; he’d not feel
dangerously confined. “It has been years since I’ve bedded down in fresh, clean
straw,” he continued on the same cheerful note. “No inn on earth can provide a
finer bed then that.” He eyed the row of covered buckets lining a sturdy shelf
at the far end of the barn. “And there is no finer drink than milk fresh from a
cow.”

Maddy
managed a smile, but she looked drawn and pale and her huge eyes seemed to
swallow her fine-boned face. Tristan ruffled her damp curls, as if she truly
were his young
paysan
companion. “Cheer up,
mon petit garçon,”
he
teased. “The gods have smiled on us. Tonight we shall live like kings.”

Long
after Tristan had extinguished the lantern, Maddy lay wide awake, clutching the
heavy cross Father Bertrand had given her. The storm that had been threatening
all afternoon had struck with a vengeance shortly before they’d climbed the
ladder to bed down in the fragrant straw. Rain pelted the roof above her head
with the steady rat-a-tat of a thousand pebbles plunging from the heavens and
the wind howled around the corners of the snug little barn like a ravaging
wolf. Never in her entire life had she felt so frighteningly lost and alone.

Not
that the man sleeping beside her had been anything but gentlemanly. But there
was something so impersonal about his treatment of her, she felt very much like
the old horse he had led into the empty stall—just another creature he must
tend to before he could eat his meager supper and retire for the night.

He
had even rubbed them both down with the rough-textured grain sacks he’d found
folded on a shelf. First the dobbin, then her, explaining as he briskly rubbed
her back and shoulders that it was the best he could do since they couldn’t
remove their wet clothing.

Then
he’d handed her a sack so she could do the same for him. He might have
considered the procedure as impersonal as currying a horse. For her, it was the
most personal thing she had ever done. She still trembled, remembering the feel
of hard bone and rippling muscles beneath her hands. She had never really
touched a man before, except Grandpère when she’d nursed him through his final
illness. She hadn’t realized how different a young man’s strong, healthy body
felt from that of a sick old man.

Grandpère
. Just thinking about him brought a new
wave of desolation. He had been selfish, irascible, demanding; he had even lied
to her when it suited his purposes. But in his own way, he had loved her and
needed her. Now there was no one in the world who either loved or needed her.
Certainly not her father, who had managed very well without her for fifteen
years.

A
flood of loneliness and despair swept over her. Tears that had remained frozen
drops of ice deep inside her heart through the long, exhausting day suddenly thawed
and cascaded down her cheeks. She felt a sob rise in her throat and could no
more contain it than she could hold back the flood of tears. Burying her face
in her hands, she sobbed her heart out.

Tristan
was not asleep. How could he be, with his fingers still tingling from the touch
of Maddy’s slender shoulders and rigid back? Hell and damnation! The truth was,
every nerve in his body tingled with awareness of the woman lying beside him.
What had begun as a practical way to warm her shivering body had ended up an
excruciating experience that had left him shocked and aching and randy as a
blasted billy goat.

He
lay tense and wakeful, listening to the rustle of the straw as she tossed and
turned, and fervently wishing they were at the end of their journey instead of
the beginning. The last thing he needed was to start lusting after Garth’s
future bride.

He
heard a sound. A strangled sob. Then another and another. Dear God, she was
weeping again in that wild, soul-searing way of hers that sounded as if she were
tearing the very heart from her breast. Overwhelmed by the frightening
helplessness he always felt when faced with a woman’s tears, he rose up on his
elbow and stared into the inky blackness where he knew she lay.