“I’m nervous about being recognized near my home. I’m still a scandal there. Even the people who are kindly disposed to me still think I ran off with a man, so it would be disastrous to be found out there with you.”
He nodded. “In addition, any word of you in the area might alert your brother and make him behave cautiously. It really would be wiser if you remained in London and left this to me.”
He was right, but Bella absolutely didn’t want that.
“I think I can disguise myself,” she told him, not mentioning her experience at it. “A wig and some face paint will do, as we don’t venture too close to Carscourt. I can arrange the disguise overnight at my home in London.”
Kelano’s dark wig. A light touch with Bellona’s sallow face.
He frowned slightly, and she thought he might try to insist that she stay behind, but then he shrugged. “As you will.”
“What of you, sir? Your dress will be very remarkable in Oxfordshire.”
He smiled down at his black frock coat. “I like to be remarked upon, but to be less so I need only dress in tedious modern style.”
“And remove the skull from your ear?” Bella suggested, hearing and liking her own teasing tone.
“Must I?” he complained, eyes twinkling.
“I fear so.” He reached up and unhooked it, and then offered it to her. “I give you charge of it.”
Bella took it, saying, “A skull . . .” and thinking,
If only you gave me charge of your heart.
Even so, she closed her hand over it, resolved to keep it safe.
“Why do you wear it?” she asked. “It makes you seem a pirate.”
“Because it amuses me. And because sometimes it’s useful to be remarkable.”
“As at the Black Rat,” she remembered.
“Indeed. Now, if you truly wish to come to Oxfordshire with me, we have another problem. We will be an unusual couple, and we don’t want to make people speculate about us.”
Bella looked a question.
“We look nothing alike, so claiming to be brother and sister would be doubted, but we’re too close in age for any other innocent explanation.” After a moment, he added, “The only solution that occurs to me is that we pretend to be married.”
Bella almost jumped in her seat. “Absolutely not!”
It would sound like outrage, but it drove too close to her dreams.
“No impropriety, I assure you, but how else are we to present ourselves?”
He was right, and Bella was calming down, but it still felt too dangerous in so many ways. “Half brother and sister,” she suggested.
He raised a brow and she grimaced. She knew country ways. Even though it was possible, it wouldn’t be believed.
“I’m sorry if the idea distresses you, but if you want to come with me, I see no choice. Any peculiarity will draw attention, which makes it more likely that you will be identified. And if I may be blunt, you say yourself that you’ve no reputation to lose.”
Bella flinched, but it was true. She had no reputation left.
Which meant she was suited to be no man’s wife.
All her pretty dreams faded away. She fought not to show any trace of her pain and said, “Very well,” with a shrug. It made her all the more determined to ruin Augustus as he had ruined her.
He inclined his head. “Then may I call you Bella?”
It was a crumb, but she took it. “I suppose that would be appropriate. . . . ” But then she said, “No, you can’t. Using my real name anywhere near Carscourt might trigger recognition.”
“So it might. Sharp wits, indeed,” he approved. Another crumb. “How shall I address you then?”
“Conventionally. ‘Wife,’ or ‘Mistress Rose.’ ”
How painful this pretense was going to be, but she would choose it over the alternative—saying farewell to him in London and probably never being alone with him again.
“If we’re to be so conventional, you should be a prim young wife.” He lazily assessed her. “Your clothes fit that role, but your liveliness doesn’t. Perhaps spectacles.” Bella had started again, for spectacles were part of Bellona. “With plain glass, of course,” he explained.
She had to say, “Where would I find such things?”
“I’ll procure some for you. And a ring, of course.”
Worse and worse. Bella rubbed the third finger of her left hand. “That feels wrong.”
“All in a good cause,” he said, so casually she could have hit him.
“Travel gives me a headache,” she lied. “May we talk later?”
He agreed, of course, which left Bella at peace with her misery. She turned toward the window and tried to pretend he wasn’t there.
She had to come out of her megrims, of course, so she allowed that a pause for tea while the horses were changed had revived her. Put simply, she had a gift—stolen time with this man. She would make the most of it, which meant she wanted to find out more about him.
Once they were under way again, she asked, “So what is your business in London, sir? To do with a ship?”
“With cargo. It will take little time.”
“And your ship? The
Black Swan
? It doesn’t need you?”
“She—ships are always female—is being careened. Having her bottom scraped,” he added with twitching lips.
Bella managed not to react, but she wanted to giggle. Instead, she drew him out about ships and the sea.
Sometime later she found she was talking about herself, but safely, about her area of Oxfordshire. About the geography, agriculture, and industry. She was ashamed of her ignorance and had to confess to being a poor student.
“Being more interested in sneaking out to meet young men on the far reaches of the estate,” he said.
“But not until I was at least fifteen, I assure you, sir. Before that I merely daydreamed my way through my lessons.”
“Dreaming of meeting young men on the far reaches of the estate.”
“No. I dreamed of meeting young men at parties, balls, and assemblies. In London, even. At court.” She smiled at her youthful folly. “And being adored by all, of course.”
“How many of your dreams came true?” Thorn asked, trying not to startle her out of honest reminiscences. He wanted to know all about Bella Barstowe.
“Some did,” she said. “I began to attend local assemblies at sixteen, and went to London in the winter of 1760.”
“When George the Second was still alive?”
“Yes. I was presented to him. Very abrupt, but I think he teased me. I wasn’t sure, because his German accent was so strong. I gather our new king has no accent at all.”
“Having been born and raised in England.”
She smiled at him. “Strange for that to be strange.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Perhaps we should allow no monarch on the throne not born here.”
“An astonishing and possibly treasonous notion!”
“Isn’t it?” she tossed at him, mischievously repeating his phrase.
It was as if she blossomed before his eyes, not from a bud, but from a thistle into a flower. Not a rose. Something bolder. Perhaps a poppy. Vivid red and dancing in the breeze. That should be her destiny, not whatever drab existence she made do with now.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she demanded.
“I was revising England’s history under your new rules.” He risked a diversion to what interested him. “Have you ever attended a masquerade?”
She blushed again. Very prettily. “Why ask that?”
“Mere curiosity.”
“Then yes, I have, occasionally.”
“Do you enjoy them?”
She was wary of the direction of his questions. Interesting.
But she answered, “Yes.”
“What was your favorite costume?”
“What was yours?” she countered.
He thought of the goatherd’s homespun, but said, “A pirate. And you?”
“A medieval queen.”
“Weren’t you young for the part?”
“Everyone is young for a while, even queens.”
“True. Many a princess has been married into queendom at a young age. And to a foreign country.”
“Another example of the injustices visited on women,” she pointed out.
“ ’Struth, are you truly of that stamp?”
“Don’t you think I have reason?”
He remembered her story. “Yes, yes, you do. Let’s return to our plans. Who are the notable people in the eastern part of Oxfordshire?”
Thorn listened, but he was distracted by visions of Bella Barstowe at sixteen, delighting in parties, assemblies, and balls. Dressed as a young queen at a masquerade. Her figure, he remembered, had ripened young. That had been her problem in the Black Rat, that and her refusal to be cowed.
She would have been bold at sixteen, but not very foolish. A girl with a mind and sharp wits, relishing the game but, as she’d said, knowing the limits. She’d probably already had suitors and been on the road to a desirable husband and a happy life.
Until her brother stole that from her.
Surely there was some way to return her to that road. She was still young, and still pretty, but chained by a shredded reputation. Her revenge wouldn’t restore it. . . .
Unless her brother could be compelled to tell the truth.
He wouldn’t suggest that to her yet. He didn’t want to raise her hopes. But restoring her to her rightful station was now his prime purpose in this enterprise.
Of course, he could also always raise her above her station. He could make her a duchess.
Perhaps he twitched, for she looked a question at him. What had she been talking about? Local hunting? He was saved by the coach turning in for a change of horses. He leapt down to speak to the postilions.
What a ridiculous idea. Bella would have no more idea of how to be a duchess than would a fledgling chicken.
Bella watched him leave, dismayed. What had she said?
Something about her parents. That they weren’t affectionate, but that she and her sisters and brother had seen little of them.
Had that disgusted him because matters were arranged differently in simpler households? Her throat ached at more evidence of the social gulf between them. She didn’t mind it, but perhaps she was too formed by her own life to be a sea captain’s wife.
When he returned and the coach set off again, she remained silent, but he said, “You were speaking of your childhood, I think. Were there servants who took gentle care of you?”
She wished she could tell him all about Peg, but that would lead to other matters, so she mentioned her briefly along with others and then asked, “Were your parents loving?”
Immediately, she winced. He’d been born the bastard son of the duke, and at some point sent to live far away because he and the duke’s legitimate son looked too much alike. No wonder he said, “No,” rather shortly. Perhaps that was also why he seemed cautious about what he said next.
He talked of childhood games and then turned the conversation back to her. “I feel certain you were drawn to your parents’ attention now and then by naughtiness.”
Bella had to chuckle. “Painfully so, but I learned to keep to the safer side of their tolerance, or perhaps they simply wearied of me. My older sisters behaved exactly as they should.”
That led to talk about Athena in Maidstone, and then to memories of the Black Rat, and every word, every connection, drew her deeper into emotions that could only lead to pain.
“Do you still have your knife?” she asked.
He extended his right hand and she saw the hilt appear at his wrist. He slid it free with his left hand. Left-handed. She hadn’t noticed that before, either. Every detail was precious. She told him about her pistol and why she’d purchased it, and took it out to show him.
By the time they drew close to London, the long journey had passed in far- ranging conversation that seemed to flow easily, even though she knew he was keeping secrets. She couldn’t complain when she was keeping more.
As the coach rattled on cobblestoned streets she dreaded even a brief return to her life of lies and was tempted to tell him all about Lady Fowler and ask his advice. It was doubtless as well that he returned to the subject of her brother.
“I’ll make inquiries in London about hells in your area of Oxfordshire. I don’t suppose you know of any?”
The words slipped out. “My hells there were of a completely different order.”
He touched her hand, looking somberly into her eyes. “We will make him pay.”
They’d both removed their gloves, and she felt the comforting warmth. Then he curled his long fingers around hers, intensifying something that was more than physical heat. Something that made it much harder not to reveal the follies of her heart.
She stared at the carriage floor, probably looking bashful and even afraid, but trying desperately to reveal nothing.
He raised her hand to his lips, which made her eyes fly to his.
“I solemnly pledge to avenge you,” he said, and kissed her knuckles.
The carriage seemed extremely small now. It would take only the tiniest movement to be close enough to kiss.
He relaxed away from her, and she came to her senses. Clearly that sort of kiss hadn’t been on his mind at all.
They sank into silence until they arrived at the George Inn, where they would leave the carriage.
Bella hoped he would allow her to go off alone in a sedan chair, but of course he didn’t. As he escorted her to her house she fretted that he’d expect to go inside. How could she explain its being her own house, staffed by her own servants?
He didn’t attempt to enter, however, but simply waited until she’d unlocked the door. She looked back and waved.
He bowed in that wonderfully elegant way he had, looking darkly mysterious in the flaring light of the linkboy’s torch.
The house was dark and silent, and she hoped to slip up to her bedroom unnoticed, but a mobcapped head peered over the rail of the upper landing, illuminated by a quivering candle. Kitty seemed to have a poker in her hand. But then she ran downstairs, in danger of tripping on her nightgown and breaking her neck.