Pale Moon Rider

by Marsha Canham

  “Ye want the blue?” the maid asked, indicating the gown Renée had laid across the bed.

  “Yes, I think so. I was planning to drive into Coventry today to do some shopping.”

  “Ooo, gar, there’s a fair goin’ on in Spon. All the ribbon makers’ll be out to show their wares.” She sighed, picking at a particularly stubborn tangle in Renée’s damp hair. “Wish’t I were goin’, but Mrs. Pigeon, she says we ’ave no time for such doin’s. Trollops put stock in ribbons, she says. Trollops an’ ’hores an’ Frenchies what need to catch themselves a rich hus—” She stopped with her mouth still open around the word, then clamped her lips tightly shut. “Sorry, m’um,” she murmured a few seconds later. “I mean, yer are Lord Paxton’s niece an’ all, so yer not exactly all French, are ye? An’ ye can’t ’elp it if yer’ air al’us looks ever so nice in ribbons, an’ men look at ye all the time. S’trowth, they’d look at ye if ye wore a sack over yer ’ead and dressed in woolies.”

  Renée glanced sidelong into the mirror that hung from the back of the tub. Her hair was almost dry, flying and crackling in all directions as Jenny brushed it in the heat of the fire. It truly was a luxuriant detriment to anonymity and her gaze flicked again, this time to the tray of crimping irons Jenny had set by the fire. The scissors gleamed dully in their midst and she was tempted, sorely tempted, to just take them up and start cutting. There wasn’t time now, but perhaps later, when they were stopped somewhere for the night, a drastic change in appearance might be warranted.

  For the time being, she bade Jenny plait it into a thick rope and coil it on the crown of her head. There were enough short sprigs and wisps around her face to satisfy the maid’s need to ply the heated irons and the result was simple, yet pleasing. The corset was another matter but Renée grit her teeth and allowed herself to be laced to within a breath of torment before the bodice was fastened overtop. Stockings, petticoat, and overskirt were added, the tapes tied, the folds fussed and fretted over until she was pronounced “awesome luvly.”

  While Jenny was occupied with the task of emptying the tub water out the window, Renée returned the tray of brushes and combs to the dressing room, slipping one of each into the tapestry bag before she set it unobtrusively in the corner. She also retrieved the cravat pin from her robe and transferred it to the inside of her chemise, tucking it securely between her breasts.

  After a final look around, she walked across the hallway to Antoine’s room. The door opened before she had a chance to knock and both she and Finn jumped back in surprise.

  “Beg pardon,” he said at once. Recovering, he glanced past her shoulder and frowned when he saw Jenny through the open door to her room. “His Grace is not with you?”

  “No. I was coming to see if he was well enough to go down to breakfast today. In fact,” she paused and moistened her lips, equally aware of the maid behind them, “I was hoping he was well enough to accompany me into town later this morning. I have some errands to run and I thought, if he was feeling better, he might enjoy the fresh air. It looks so warm and sunny,” she finished lamely.

  Finn barely glanced over as Jenny exited the room carrying the empty buckets and wet towels. “I am certain he would, mad’moiselle. Shall I bring the carriage around?”

  “Please. Eleven o’clock should be soon enough.”

  He offered a slight bow. “As you wish.”

  Nodding, Renée turned and, with a creditable lack of haste, followed the wide, main corridor down to the central stairway. Sunlight was streaming brightly through the two-storey window lights that flanked the main entrance, and as she passed by the stairs, she glanced down over the main foyer. The guard at the bottom must have heard the soft whisper of her skirts, for he turned and stared back, his eyes following her progress as she crossed from one wing of the house into the other.

  The morning room was located at the far end of the west wing, above the kitchens. The walls had been painted garish yellow by some former resident who had decided the windows did not allow for enough light or cheer. The combined effect of the sunlight and the glare off the walls was temporarily blinding when she opened the door and stepped inside; her subsequent relief at seeing Antoine seated at one end of the cherrywood dining table lasted only as long as it took to blink the stars out of her eyes.

  He was not alone. There were four other men in the room with him, one of whom shot instantly to his feet and blushed as deep a red as his tunic when he saw Renée standing in the doorway. Even before her eyes adjusted to the light and her heart to the shock, she recognized Corporal Chase Marlborough of the Coventry Volunteers, the young and painfully earnest militia officer who was acting adjutant to Colonel Bertrand Roth.

  Roth was sitting with his back to the glare of the window, but there was no mistaking the stilted arrogance of his profile. He was in his regimental uniform, a splash of crimson against the flaring light. The redness of his hair was dampened under a white military wig, but his smile, when he drew his lips back over the double rack of oversized, misaligned teeth, gleamed with the same delighted malice she had last seen at the Fox and Hound Inn.

  “Ahh. Mademoiselle d’Anton. A pleasure indeed to see you up and about so early. We were just discussing the lay-about habits of most beautiful young women who think nothing of sleeping half the day away. What do you think, Edgar? Will you be encouraging or discouraging such energetic vigor in a new wife?”

  Slowly Renée turned her shocked regard to the third man in the room who was only now following Roth’s tardy example and pushing to his feet. Edgar Vincent was a tall man, easily six feet in height, with the broad shoulders and solid, bullish neck of a man who had spent more years at hard labor than behind the desk of an exporting office. His features were thick and blunt; a single black slash crossed his forehead in lieu of separate eyebrows and the eyes beneath were a dull, flat brown. A far cry from ugly, he was also well beyond the reach of friendly. His manners were forced, as if he resented having to possess any, and his speech was often coarse, respecting neither the age nor tender sensibilities of anyone who happened to be in his company.

  Renée felt their chilly assessment as he looked with obvious disappointment at her choice of attire. At their first meeting he had inspected her like a man buying a show horse, falling short of checking her teeth and testing the firmness of her calves, but not by much. Successive meetings had produced little more than a curt nod if he approved or a slight curl in his lip if he disdained. The lip was nearly folded in half now over the severity of her hair, the modesty of her neckline, the primness of the blue velvet, and she felt a flush of resentment stain her cheeks. He was peasant stock, a bourgeoisie graveyard thief, yet he had the effrontery to sit in judgment on others.

  The fourth man was at the server, helping himself from the contents of several chafing dishes. Renée could only see the side of his face, for he seemed more intent on the food than the company, but he appeared to be as tall as Edgar Vincent, the impression heightened by the addition of a powdered wig. His breeches and swallowtail coat were charcoal gray, styled at the extreme end of fashion with indulgently high, molded lapels on his jacket and a neckcloth wound so tight, pleated so precisely, it was a wonder he could move his chin at all as he inspected the various dishes.

  “Do come and join us, my dear,” Roth said, indicating the empty seat opposite him. “We have just won a minor victory over Mrs. Pigeon’s niggardly disposition, managing to badger her into providing something more substantial than gruel and green ham. Wretched creature. I must say I’m surprised Paxton has not had her shot and spitted years ago. Not nearly as accommodating or resourceful as your own Mr. Finn, I warrant?”

  The color Renée had so recently won in her cheeks drained away again with the speed of an opened vein. She had not seen or heard from Roth since their meeting at the Fox and Hound. While she had been grateful for the reprieve, she could see by the hard light in the amber eyes that he had neither forgotten nor dismissed the incident, and the fact it was far too early i
n the morning for a social visit, despite her fiancé’s unexpected appearance in Coventry, pressed in upon her breast with the strength of a second corset.

  “Yes, do join us,” Vincent said, waving a hand impatiently.

  She looked up into the flat, brown eyes and willed the revulsion she was feeling not to come through her voice. “I … have just come to fetch Antoine. Finn is bringing the coach around to take us into town. I have some errands to run and—”

  “They can wait, I am sure.” Roth interrupted, frowning. “We have come on errands of our own that merit far more consideration than gadding about town on a shopping adventure. Marlborough, for heaven’s sake, if you are going to hold your breath to the point of asphyxia will you at least do the honors first before you swoon away?”

  The corporal was indeed suffering an excess of adoration as he stumbled in his haste to pull out the high-backed chair for Renée. He looked almost too young to be in uniform—eighteen or nineteen at most—with round, puppy eyes and smooth cheeks devoid of the faintest hint of stubble. He stood perhaps an inch taller than Renée, but looked as if he would gladly have knelt at her feet if she requested it.

  “Mam’selle,” he said, his voice a reverent whisper.

  She willed her legs to carry her forward as far as the chair and was not quite there when the man at the server cursed through a nasal whine and started rubbing at a speck of fat that had splashed on his cuff.

  “Blast it, anyway! The devil take whoever left the sodding spoon at such an angle. Look here, now. A sleeve ruined and the hour not yet gone ten.”

  Roth cast a droll glance in his direction. “And you already in your third costume this morning.”

  “The gray I selected initially was decidedly too pale for the weather. The brown did not show well with these boots, and the black was simply a travesty. Threads loose everywhere. A pucker in the seam, no less. Had I been given more warning of your arrival—” The chastisement was left to hang in the air as he turned around and tipped his head smartly to acknowledge Renée’s presence for the first time. “Mam’selle. You must excuse our boorish behavior. I, for one, was roused quite before any civil hour and ordered into a coach without benefit of a biscuit or tea—both of which, I might add, I was in dire need of to combat an entirely sleepless night. Demmed tooth, if you must know. Refused to give me any peace, not even when I attempted to chew a clove. Blast me if I wasn’t getting quite desperate enough to send my man out to the river to catch a frog that I might bind it to the top of my head.”

  A noticeably prolonged silence stretched until Vincent’s curiosity got the better of him.

  “Why in God’s name would you tie a frog to your head?”

  “Why, I have it on very good authority it takes the pain of a toothache—or a megrim headache—instantly away.”

  Renée felt her heart drop lower in her chest, felt the beating slow to a near deathly halt. Luckily hers was not the only startled gaze that followed the gentleman as he carried his plate around to the far side of the table, for as he walked, he continued to expound upon the medicinal properties of frogs and toads.

  She was, in the end, thankful for the long-windedness of his dissertation, for the distraction it caused around the table gave her time to at least partially recover from yet another shock.

  Not that there had been anything immediately familiar about him. If she had passed him in the street she might never have taken a second look. Nor would she have ever associated such a prim and prancing fop with the darkly handsome, broodingly dangerous man she had last seen exiting her bedroom window.

  It was the way he had said “mam’selle” that had sent a spray of gooseflesh down her arms. The pronunciation was distinct and softly slurred in a way no two men could duplicate. Here was Captain Starlight, her phantom midnight lover who had left her with the indelible impression of gleaming muscles, raw power, and unquestionable masculinity.

  In the garish sunlight of the breakfast room, Tyrone’s jaw was still chiseled and lean, but his complexion had been lightened by cosmetics, the brows dulled by chalk. His hair—that gloriously unruly mane of dark waves— was confined beneath a wig dominated by a series of manicured sausages from the temples to the ears. Even his eyes, so large and bold and thrillingly seductive in the half-light, were kept in a pretentious squint so that she could not immediately discern their color a table’s width away.

  What was he doing here? Why was he with Roth and Vincent? Why, in the name of all the saints, was he staring at her, smiling a simpering smile as if he was seeking her approval for something he had said?

  In a mild panic she looked around the table, coming perilously close to suffering asphyxia herself as one by one the other pairs of eyes in the room turned to stare at her.

  “You do not have to answer that, of course,” Roth mused. “Endless pontifications on the merits of frogs and other such inane incidentals have become a common, if somewhat tiresome, affliction some of us must endure for the sake of working together in harmony. But, alas, I do not believe you have had the pleasure of making this gentleman’s acquaintance. Mademoiselle Renée d’Anton, I have the … honor of presenting Mr. Tyrone Hart, Esquire.”

  Later she would swear that his steps were minced as he came around the end of the table again to execute a graciously low bow over her hand.

  “Mam’selle,” he said, brushing his lips over the backs of her fingers. “While the pleasure and the honor is all mine, I assure you, the weight of shocking incivility may be credited solely to these two gentlemen. What is more, if they find it inane of me to point out the total unreasonableness of being roused at such an ungodly hour, well, it is to the further default of their own characters. I expect we have quite unsettled you by appearing like a band of pillaging vagabonds at your breakfast table, and without so much as a card delivered beforehand by way of warning. I beg you accept my apologies, mam’selle. I should never have countenanced such behavior had I discerned their intentions ahead of time.”

  Though the words sounded stilted and were delivered in a petulant tone, Renée had recovered enough of her wits to sense the apology was sincere, meant to convey the fact that he was as ill at ease with the situation as she. His eyes, when she dared look into them, came briefly out of their squint, and she imagined she could see in their clear gray depths the encouragement she needed to regain control over the wild beating of her heart.

  “There is no need to apologize, m’sieur,” she said quietly, determined to keep her voice from breaking. “I am sure it could not be helped.”

  Something flickered briefly in his eyes—was it relief or admiration? A moment later he executed another, less flamboyant bow and returned to his seat. As she watched him retreat, her fingers throbbed, and she realized there had been an ungovernable tautness in his grip. He had been wound as tightly as a spring beneath the calm facade, not at all certain what her reaction was going to be.

  Knowing this, knowing she was not alone in her confusion and panic, she was able to hold her trembling hands folded in her lap, and even to muster a polite smile as she turned to Vincent.

  “You must forgive my own lack of manners, m’sieur, for we were not expecting you until week’s end.”

  “I had business in Warwick. It brought me away from London sooner than expected.”

  “I see.” She moistened her lips. “And my uncle?”

  “I am told Lord Paxton’s gout has flared up again,” Roth provided, “giving him an excuse to remove himself from the emergency House debates, so it should not surprise you to see him as early as tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Is it true,” Hart inquired, dabbing his mouth with the napkin, “there is nothing but squabbling and bickering going on in political circles these days? I have heard that Fox stands on one side of the floor demanding our armies be brought home from France, while Mr. William Pitt has braced himself on the other insisting we must dispatch our navy to the Mediterranean at once before this upstart Napoleon takes all of Italy and seriou
sly threatens our trading routes.”

  “I would not have guessed you to be political, sir,” Vincent declared. “Or to give a fig’s ass what our armies do.”

  “I’ll have you know, sir, I care very much indeed, and am in complete agreement with Mr. Pitt.”

  Even Roth looked surprised. “You condone our making war on two fronts? Of leaving our coastlines vulnerable to attack while the navy is sent off to defend a strip of land a thousand miles away?”

  “Not just the land, dear chap. He who commands Italy, commands the Mediterranean, and I would condone anything that would preclude the necessity of doing without our India trade for any length of time. Can you imagine not being able to procure the most basic staples? Why, at the very least we could expect to fall an entire year out of fashion for every shipload of silks waylaid by some devilish French blockade. I swear it is enough of a travesty to discover we are already lagging far behind the Italians and Spaniards in their quality of lace and silver. You need only look here, at this flounce”—he thumbed the cuff of lace that jutted from his coat sleeve—“made not ten miles from here and so unremarkable in quality and character as to verge on an embarrassment.” He clucked his tongue in disdain and this time, in the absolute silence that followed, Renée could hear little more than the sound of her own blood rushing past her ears.

  Vincent glared at Roth. “Is this absolutely necessary?”

  “I’m afraid so, especially if we expect to have any success in our efforts to capture Captain Starlight. To date, we have not had many volunteers in that respect, and it would be foolish to refuse even a modicum of expertise if offered.”

  Renée could not help the bewildered look she sent along the table this time, but Tyrone deferred again to Roth by way of a waved fork, indicating that his mouth was too full of buttered parsnips to offer an explanation.

  “It appears I am once more guilty of the error of omission,” Roth sighed. “I neglected to mention Mr. Hart is our esteemed Surveyor of turnpikes, and to that end, with the possible exception of Starlight himself, there is no other man in the five parishes as familiar with every hill and dale, every patch of gorse and stretch of bog along every turnpike between here and London.”