A Lady Unrivaled

by Roseanna M. White

  Rushworth made another humming noise that sounded somewhat thoughtful. Rather than wait to see what else he might have to say, Kira headed for the door. She made it to the threshold before he called out, “Just a moment.”

  She paused, turned halfway around. And wondered again as she had wondered last night when word came that she had been hired what she would do if her new employer made advances. She was in no position to resist, not when she couldn’t return empty-handed—but she was in no position to give in either, not when betraying Andrei meant a fate worse than death.

  Rushworth’s eyes were narrowed. “You put me in mind of someone. I cannot quite place who.”

  At that, she smiled—she had already anticipated being recognized. “Are you a fan of the Ballet Russe, my lord? I’ve been told I bear quite a resemblance to one of their ballerinas.”

  “Hm. I suppose that could be it. I did take Kitty to a performance when we got to Paris several months ago, hoping it would draw her out.” He made a face and leaned back in his chair, picking up a book that had been sitting facedown on the table. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. “It served only to remind her of how our cousin used to prattle about her love of the ballet from her days in Monaco. And our cousin is not Kitty’s favorite person.”

  Kira held her place another second to see if he said more—she obviously had no commentary on their cousin.

  But Rushworth waved her on. “Do let me know if she eats anything, will you, Lareau? And otherwise, have her ready to leave at first light tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She hurried out of the room and back to Lady Pratt’s bedchamber, where the lady still sat staring out of the window. Kira slid the tea and pastries onto the little table near at hand. “Here you are, my lady. Your brother made your tea himself.”

  Lady Pratt actually reached for the cup, though Kira half expected her to send it flying through the room rather than drink it. But no, she raised it to her lips and took a slow sip. She even glanced—for half a moment—at Kira. “And what did he say to you? Did he tell you about Byron?”

  “Your son? Oui, briefly.” But how was she to provide any comfort? When a child died in her village, everyone would merely cross themselves and say either “One fewer mouth to feed” or “He’s with the angels now.” Of course, those mothers usually had a brood of other children at home and scarce supplies with which to care for them. Perhaps it was different if one’s arms were then empty. And if one’s larder was full.

  Lady Pratt’s gaze fell to her cup, as if the liquid within held answers. “He grows frustrated with me. Before it was always enough that we had each other—Kitty and Cris against the world—but he doesn’t understand. He’s blind to everything but . . . he can’t understand.” She looked up, eyes empty but for the tears. “Have you ever lost a child?”

  More like feared one—nothing put an end to a ballerina’s career as quickly as a squalling babe. Or, apparently, an injured knee. Folding her hands before her, Kira shook her head. “Not of my own. Though I lost two sisters growing up.”

  “Two of them?” Lady Pratt blinked. “Your poor mother.”

  “She had six other children—and counted herself blessed to lose only one. The other died after she did. Half our children die, my lady. Russia can be a cruel land.”

  “Half?” The lady looked ready to burst into tears at the thought. “How do you survive it?”

  “With the knowledge that little ones go straight to heaven, which spares them a world of suffering.” Words that meant nothing to this new mistress of hers right now, she could tell.

  Indeed, Lady Pratt turned her face away. “You’re religious?”

  Kira shook her head. “I have not been to church since I left Russia.” She had tried it, a few times, but the churches in Europe weren’t the same. They had long benches where one was expected to simply sit. Sit and listen. How could one worship that way? “But faith is a different matter—I have heard it said that every Russian has faith, and I cannot argue. If we believed in nothing greater than ourselves, then we would give up rather than face the hardships that take us from one point in life to another.”

  A breath of a laugh slipped from the lady’s lips. “That would be the simpler way. To just give up. Let go. Because really, why do we bother?”

  The question scraped and scratched at everything Kira believed. How could anyone look at the impossible and not fight it? How could anyone just lie down and accept defeat? “We bother because if we do not, we are like the rest of the world, letting circumstances rule us.” She shook her head and sent her gaze out the window, to where the world went on. Always on, telling her what she could and couldn’t do. “I do not know about you, my lady. But I will not be ruled.”

  Something flickered in Lady Pratt’s eyes, though it was nothing so bright as hope or determination. More like . . . resentment. “An odd thing to come from the mouth of a servant.”

  No more odd, probably, than the smile Kira could not tamp down. “But I am staff, not serf. I can leave whenever I please.”

  The lady put her cup onto the plate with a clatter. “And where would you go without a recommendation?”

  “Anywhere.” But for all her brave words, she couldn’t leave, could she? Kira drew in a deep breath and forced her smile to soften. She curtsied. “But I want to be here. It is my great hope that I can serve you well, my lady.”

  Lady Pratt loosed a dismissive snort of breath and turned her face back to the window. “Go away. Come back after supper to help me retire.”

  Another curtsy made her knee ache, but Kira gritted her teeth against it and slipped from the room. She peeked into the parlor just long enough to report to Lord Rushworth that his sister had taken a bit of tea and nibbled on a pastry, and then she headed to the cramped little room in which she would only stay one night.

  She hadn’t bothered unpacking for her short tenure. Had scarcely looked at the plain, bare walls. The plain, bare chair. The plain, bare blanket on the bed. She didn’t look now either. She merely moved the chair around so that she could grip its plain, bare back like a barre. Stripped off the ugly white apron and the heavy, cumbersome dress she was expected to wear, tossed them onto the bed.

  Then she closed her eyes, summoned music into her mind, and drilled. Rond de jambe en dehors, closing back into fifth position.

  She would not be what circumstances made her.

  Attitude on her inside leg—her good leg—devant. Fondu on her supporting leg—her bad leg.

  She would ignore the pain, ignore the weakness until it turned back into strength.

  Arm sweeping out to second position. Retiré and straighten that bad knee, stretching it past relief and into new pain. Arm to fifth position en avant.

  She would not be ruled.

  Seven

  Ella turned to her left, then to her right, tightly gripping the wooden handle of her umbrella. But it was no use. Heaven only knew how she had managed it, but she had lost the castle . . . again. Perhaps some crafty fog had sneaked up and swallowed it whole. Perhaps the rain had washed it away. Or perhaps the wooded path she had chosen for her morning promenade had led her into a fairy world outside normal time, and she would be trapped there until some handsome prince saved her.

  Not likely to happen before the umbrella lost the battle to wind and rain and she got a thorough soaking.

  Ah, well. She examined the trees nearest her, searching them for some familiar marking. Unlikely, though—her mind had hardly been on the details of the trees as she wandered into the wood. Instead it had been on the handsome prince-turned-grumbling-earl who had scarcely said two words to her in the past week.

  She usually wouldn’t mind losing herself in the Staffords’ wood, but the air was dreadfully chilly, and no one would be looking for her yet. Brook had been confined to a chaise in her private sitting room this morning, ill—no doubt a result of her happy condition. And though she knew Ella had gone for a walk, Brook was not one to worry if she failed to appear a
t the expected time.

  Unlike Ella’s brother, Brice, who would deliver an exasperated lecture if she happened to wander back in ten minutes later than he’d expected her. Which, now that she thought of it, wasn’t entirely dissimilar from the exasperated lecture Brook had delivered last night when she caught Ella in the library again, a slew of books on jewels arrayed on the table before her.

  Honestly, what had her friend expected? Brook herself would certainly never have so easily accepted a command to let something go. Why did she think Ella would?

  And she had learned much about all things jewel-related this past week. Now she had only to begin the quest for information on India. She’d heard her sister-in-law, Rowena, mutter something about “the tiger’s curse” last fall when arguing about the Fire Eyes with Brice. Surely she could find information on that somewhere or another. Once she found her way back.

  Infernal castle, disappearing as it had done. Well, there were only so many paths through the wood, and most of them surely led back to Ralin Castle—where else would they go? She spun on the path to the right, estimating that she had at least half a chance of emerging back into the garden within a few minutes.

  But instead she stood, those few minutes later, at a river. “Drat.” It looked lovely, granted, with the rain bringing it to life with a thousand ripples, and with its bordering grasses bowing and curtsying in the wind. But her feet were cold and wet. And her hands were cold and wet. And before too long the rest of her was sure to be cold and wet too.

  It shouldn’t have reminded her of Stella. It hadn’t been raining the day her oldest friend had raised her gun and taken a shot at Brice and Rowena. It hadn’t been raining that night when Brice had realized she was the one behind the weapon, when poor Old Abbott had been forced to restrain his daughter while the authorities came. It hadn’t been raining when Brice returned to Midwynd and told Ella what Stella had done.

  But it had felt like it as she sobbed out her sorrow and regret in her brother’s room. It had felt grey and dismal while she’d clung to hope, insisting that young Mr. Abbott—Stella’s own brother, who had taken the bullet in Brice’s stead—would survive the head wound.

  The library had given Ella hope that day, as she sorted through medical books, desperate for facts to back up her faith. She’d found them. She always found them when she prayed to the Lord for a reason to believe. He wanted His children to have faith in the impossible. To hold to hope. To sing praises to Him when chained in the darkest, dankest prison. Or caught out in the pouring rain. And young Mr. Abbott had survived, proving her faith was not misguided.

  If only that had eclipsed her terrible guilt of not having seen what his sister was capable of.

  A thrashing sound broke through the curtain of falling water. Ella spun to face it, but she couldn’t quite tell from where it came—or what was making it. They hadn’t any bears in England, though she had to remind herself of that, given the size of the sound. No wolves either, had they? They were far too civilized a land for such beasts.

  Though one never knew when a traveling circus might have lost some ferocious creature. It could be a dancing bear gone rogue. A lion escaped from its tamer.

  No, she saw when a dark form emerged from the trees—it was far worse. A scowling, obviously angry earl who refused to play the part of handsome prince. And whom she couldn’t help like despite it . . . or perhaps, in part, because of it.

  Cayton tromped her way with fury coming off him in waves. “Blast it, Ella, what in thunder are you doing all the way down here in the rain?”

  He was drenched, his grey overcoat gone black with the rain dripping from its hem. Under the hat brim dripping rain, his brow was as thunderous as the heavy clouds overhead. And he had called her Ella—not Lady Ella.

  She tried, really she did, to keep from grinning. “At least I had the sense to bring an umbrella with me. What in thunder are you doing out here without one, Lord Cayton?”

  His scowl only deepened. “Does your brother let you use such language?”

  Men—so hypocritical. “Is thunder now a curse word? I thought it a weather phenomenon—and a rather appropriate one just now.”

  He stomped to her side and took her elbow. Not exactly gently, though more insistent than rough. “I didn’t think I would need an umbrella to find a young lady who ‘may have taken a wrong turn in the garden.’ My cousin failed to mention that your detours took you to the blasted river rather than just the gardener’s shed.” He tugged her back up the path. “You are nearly off Stafford land—do you realize that?”

  And how would she, unless there were a sign declaring such? “I would have found my way back, eventually. All roads lead to Ralin Castle around here, don’t they?”

  They stepped over a sodden branch, and his head collided with the umbrella. With an incomprehensible mutter, he abandoned her elbow in favor of wrenching the umbrella’s handle from her hands and holding it a good six inches higher than she had been doing.

  She had to press her lips together against a laugh that he would no doubt not appreciate. “Sorry, my lord. I did endeavor to grow taller, but for all my stretching and straining, I seem to be stuck here.”

  His answer to that was a grunt. Then he sent her a scathing glare. “Haven’t you the sense to wait until it’s done raining before you set off on an hour-long walk?”

  She could understand his anger, given his soaking. Really, she could. What she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around was the way he’d been scowling at her every time he happened across her path this past week, when she was quite sure he didn’t dislike her. A man who picked her dandelions, spoke of unicorns, and asked her to dance in a twilight garden couldn’t possibly dislike her.

  But what did she know? She’d thought Stella to be kind and rational, after all.

  Ella shook her head. “Now you sound like my brother.”

  “Who apparently needs to do a better job of keeping you in order—perhaps it’s time you go home so he can have another go at it.”

  Of all the . . . “Excuse me, Lord Cayton, but it is hardly up to you to decide when I go home. And my brother knows better than to try to force me into order. It would never work—it’s far too boring.”

  Was that a laugh or a grunt? Amusement or derision? She couldn’t quite tell, and he didn’t look her way again, just kept his gaze focused on the path.

  She, since her hands were now free, picked up her skirt to step over a puddle. “You needn’t have come looking for me. Brook knew I was out, and she knows I find my way back eventually.”

  Definitely a grunt this time.

  Ella sent her eyes to the cloudy heavens. “How did you even find me?”

  “The paths are muddy, my lady, and you not so slender that you fail to leave a print.”

  He had to be trying to sound so crotchety. He had to be. “My, you are charming. Careful, or I may fall at your feet in adoration, and then you’ll have to carry my not-so-slender muddy form back to the castle.”

  Another laugh-grunt, and he glanced down at her, sweeping his gaze over her figure. Which was neither too round nor too thin, thank you very much. She might have a propensity for sweets, but she was also rarely idle.

  Cayton shook his head. “Does nothing offend you?”

  She gave him her cheekiest grin. She had been right. This time. “Nothing that I’ve found yet, though we may discover something if you keep up your current method of interaction when you are unable to avoid me completely.”

  A muscle in his jaw pulsed, proving that he was clenching his teeth against a response.

  Grin still in place, she tucked her hand around the arm holding the umbrella. “Not that I can blame you, of course, for avoiding me. It’s dangerous business, exchanging a few words with a young lady. Treacherous indeed when outside in a garden. Or in a nursery with a few happy toddlers. But especially, my lord . . .” She leaned closer, pitched her voice down. “Especially out in the wood in the rain. Why, my brother found himself married thanks to
just such a thing. You ought to have run for cover when you saw where my footsteps led.”

  “Well, it isn’t too late.” He angled a wry look down at her, eyes beginning to sparkle, even if his lips were still turned down.

  She moved her left hand atop her right to secure her hold on his arm. “You could try it, but this is one case where I would definitely chase after a man.”

  “Hmm.” He turned his face away again, those brows returning to their nearly perpetual scowl. “I’ll deliver you back to the castle, my lady, but do cease the flirtation. It only proves you young and naïve.”

  “Naïve?” It sliced, for a moment. How often had Brice applied that word to her? But when he said it, it was only frustrating, not hurtful. She wouldn’t be hurt, though. She wouldn’t, because he was obviously trying, for whatever ill-placed reason, to hurt her. And she refused to be bullied in such a way. “Those who call me naïve do so because it makes them feel better about their own ill humor, to think that I am only cheerful because I don’t understand the world. But I assure you, my lord, I do. And I choose to greet it with a smile anyway.”

  “Senseless, then.”

  That offense she claimed a moment ago never to feel pulled taut within her. Until she saw the way his nostrils flared, the way his jaw pulsed. He was trying to be off-putting. And not because he disliked her.

  Well, it only made sense. “You are so transparent, Lord Cayton. Changing your behavior toward me so abruptly after that conversation with Lady Melissa. Though do allow me to point out that it’s your own fault we find ourselves in such mutually displeasing company right now.”

  “We’ll be mutually rid of it soon enough.” They’d reached a fork in the path, and he turned them toward the left.

  She would have gone to the right. And where would that have taken her? Perhaps she’d explore it on a finer day. She followed, lagging half a step behind for a moment. As she caught up, a strange smudge at his hairline caught her eyes. Blue? Why would he have something blue caught in his hair?