by Jane Feather
Vasquez mounted, settled his rapier at his side. The telltale bulge of a pistol showed in his coat pocket as he twisted forward to adjust his stirrup. He spoke again to the man at his bridle, then rode out of the yard and onto the cart track leading to the crossroads.
Harry and Alex were a good twenty feet from the track, and downwind, but even so both held their breath as the man rode past. The horse did not catch the scent of his fellows however, and horse and rider went on past along the track.
“He’s Falconer’s now,” Harry murmured. “Now we wait.”
“I’d rather just go in and get her out of there,” Alex muttered.
“We can’t afford any sound that will alert Vasquez.”
“I know that,” Alex whispered.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t like waiting either.”
Alex nodded. They had to stick to their plan. The henchman would bring Aurelia out soon. When he did so, then Alex and Harry would make their move. Silently.
• • •
Aurelia was still locked in the stall when she heard her captors moving around, talking in whispers, the sound of a stall being opened and the unmistakable creak of leather and the heavy clop of iron-shod hooves. So some part of the building was put to its proper use, she reflected, creeping to the partition, trying to peer out through the narrow strips between the slats.
It was impossible to see anything, however, but she could hear well enough. The whispers were in Spanish, so not much help, but she could at least tell Vasquez and his henchman apart by their voices. She heard the sounds of the outside door opening, then the horse moving away.
There had only been one horse. So was Vasquez going for his murderous rendezvous with Greville? Or had Carlos left? And what would happen if Greville failed to keep the appointment…failed to walk into whatever trap they had laid for him?
She couldn’t think like that. If she did, the fear would paralyze her. She knew they would kill her, knew that if Greville didn’t come to her rescue, she would die in the next few hours. Never see Franny again, never smell May blossom or new-cut grass, never see the life that she carried enter the world. Panic swamped her. She leaned her forehead against the rough wooden planking of the stall and pressed hard, feeling the pain as the wood abraded her skin. The pain took her out of her panic, cleared her mind, brought focus.
She stepped back, ran a hand lightly over her belly in a symbolic gesture of reassurance to the life within, and banged vigorously on the door to her stall. A rough voice murmured a string of what sounded even in a foreign tongue like obscenities. But she had the answer to one question. She was alone with Carlos.
She backed away from the door and looked around the dimly lit enclosure for something…anything. Greville had said it was rare to find nothing of use in a confined space if one looked with trained eyes. All she could see here were straw, a length of twine that she had untied from around the bale of straw that she had used to make a nest, and the wooden sides that enclosed her. The iron rings were no use, they wouldn’t budge. Only to be expected if they were intended to hold a rampaging horse. But what of the rough slats of the partition walls?
Aurelia moved slowly down the length, unsure what she looking for until she found it. A large splinter of wood. She pried it loose gingerly. It was long and thin, and sharp.
She picked up the length of twine and examined her armory with a critical eye. Not bad for a woman in a silk-and-spider-gauze ball gown. In different circumstances she would have laughed at the reflection, but now it merely served to help her focus, to find deep within herself the training she had had from Greville.
She positioned herself behind the half door to the stall, and in the angle, so that when the top half was opened she would momentarily be hidden from view. Then she started yelling at the top of her voice as she banged with her fists on the door.
Carlos cursed her again, then flung open the top half of the door, still hurling whispered abuse. When he couldn’t see her, he stuck his head farther into the stall. Aurelia drove the sharp point of the splinter into his neck, just below his ear. He yelped, fighting to pull it free, spinning around with his back to the door. As he turned, Aurelia flipped the length of twine around his neck and pulled it tight with all her strength, using the door he leaned against as leverage. She didn’t have the power to strangle him, she knew, but she could bring him down to his knees, render him helpless long enough for her to unbolt the bottom half of the door.
He slid forward, grabbing at the makeshift garrote, struggling for breath, the splinter still sticking out from behind his ear. As he fell to his knees, she lost her hold on the twine, but it was a matter of a second to draw the bolt. She thrust the door forward with all the power in her shoulder, and it knocked her jailor from his knees onto his face in the straw.
She jumped on him foursquare for good measure on her way to the door and heard him groaning behind her. But she didn’t care how much damage she had done. The man would have hurt her child without a second thought given half a chance, and he deserved everything she could give him.
Aurelia burst out into the abandoned stable yard just as Alex and Harry came racing through the trees.
“Dear God in heaven, Aurelia,” Harry gasped, leaning a hand down to her as he drew rein beside her. “We thought he had your feet to the fire.”
She stared at them in disbelief. “How…What…What are you doing here? Where’s Greville?”
“Dealing with your abductor,” Harry said briefly. “And you shouldn’t need to ask what we’re doing here, Aurelia.”
“No, I suppose not,” she said with a faint smile. “Of course you’d be here, it’s all in a day’s work for you.” She took the hand he held down to her and let him haul her up onto the saddle in front of him, asking again, “Where is Greville?”
“Meeting with Vasquez…only you were making such a racket that our best-laid plans have probably gone awry.” Alex came up beside them. “How many did you murder?”
“None. But you need to secure one. I left him on his face, but I doubt I did him enough harm to keep him there.”
“I’ll do that,” Alex said, dismounting, a pistol already in his hand. “Harry, you’d better take Aurelia and see what’s going on at the crossroads.”
• • •
Don Antonio heard the faint sounds of shouting just as he reached the crossroads. It was a woman’s voice. He rode on. Carlos could handle the woman with one hand tied behind his back. And it wouldn’t hurt Falconer to hear his wife’s cries. It would prepare him for what was to come.
The crossroads was deserted, the four tracks forming the cross stretching away as faint gray lines in the beginning dawn light.
He rode into the middle and drew rein. He didn’t reach for a weapon. The asp would not kill him from a hiding place. Not unless he had the woman safe. Don Antonio felt his blood surge. He had waited for this day for too long. Oh, certainly he was on his country’s work and would never lose sight of that, but he could satisfy his own niggling dissatisfaction with a past mistake at the same time.
“So, Vasquez, where is my wife? I can hear her well enough, but I must see her before we can discuss an exchange.”
Don Antonio turned his head towards the small stand of trees dominated by a giant oak on the right of the crossroads. He couldn’t see the asp, but he didn’t need to for this conversation. “She’ll be here in a moment. Show yourself.”
“Show me my wife.”
Antonio took a whistle from his pocket, looked back over his shoulder, and blew one shrill note. “She’ll be here in just a few moments,” he said as if they were discussing the appearance of a horse for sale at Tattersalls.
“I wonder how I missed you at Lisbon,” the voice mused from behind the oak tree. “I thought I knew everyone of interest who was there at the time. You slipped past my spies.”
“And you foiled me. I don’t make mistakes, asp.”
“No, I’m sure you don’t…in general,” Greville added
with soft deliberation. He wanted Vasquez to be annoyed, a little off center. All the while he was listening for the sound that would herald Aurelia’s arrival on the scene with whoever held her. As far as the Spaniards were concerned, it would be one against two then, with Aurelia in the middle. But in fact it was three against two. Still with Aurelia in the middle.
But Aurelia was not without her own resources, he told himself. She’d proved it already.
He heard footsteps coming from the track to the abandoned stable and judged it time to move out. He rode into the crossroads, his hand on his rapier, and with a nod saluted his opponent, who offered the same courtesy.
“Bring her here, Carlos,” Don Antonio instructed.
“I can bring myself, Don Antonio.” Aurelia stepped forward. She held a pistol.
Ye Gods and little fishes. Greville wanted to throw back his head and laugh. His Aurelia, all his. How she’d done it, he couldn’t begin to guess. But he was fairly certain Harry and Alex had had little real part in it. The only sounds he had heard had been from Aurelia.
She leveled the pistol at Don Antonio. “Should I shoot him, Greville?”
“Well, that depends on how much of a grievance you bear him,” Greville said, sliding his rapier from its sheath. “If you wouldn’t mind too much, I would like to conclude the business in my own way…but I will defer to you.”
“I don’t really care for shooting people,” Aurelia said. “You should know, Don Antonio, that Carlos is being taken care of by Prince Prokov. Lord Bonham is just behind me.”
Don Antonio seemed to ignore her. He looked at Greville as the first bloodred touch of the sun appeared on the eastern horizon. “Is that how you wish to conclude this, Falconer?” The Spaniard, too, drew his rapier from its sheath.
“No,” Greville said, dismounting. “I, too, like a challenge, Vasquez. Aurelia, take my horse.”
She went swiftly to take the reins, but she couldn’t understand why he was doing this…accepting a challenge that he might not win, when all he had to do was shoot and walk away. But she knew, too, deep in her core, that Greville had his own code of justice. He wanted this last battle to be personal.
He was a strange man, to put it mildly. He was capable of quite frightening emotional detachment. He didn’t know how to love, but she knew that he loved her nevertheless. And she loved him. She loved him for his humor, for his all-embracing competency, for his devotion to his work, for the sadness and loneliness of his past life, for the selfless skill of his lovemaking. But mostly she loved him just for himself. She’d known that for a long time, and she did know how to love. And knowing how to do that meant she had to step away now and let him conclude this in his own way.
Her hand brushed her belly in the now habitual gesture. Once this was over, Greville Falconer had another love to acknowledge.
Aurelia moved back with Greville’s horse to stand close to the oak tree. Harry had dismounted and was already standing there. He had heard the exchange and accepted as she had his colleague’s decision. But with a swift move he took the pistol from Aurelia. It was his own, after all. Don Antonio Vasquez was not leaving here alive.
The two men stood facing each other, bright blades in their hands. By mutual consent they tossed their firearms to the ground, away from where they stood. Their blades saluted, touched. Greville danced back, the rapier in his right hand, but his left hand moved swiftly, and a dagger flew, catching his opponent in the muscle of his sword arm. Don Antonio’s arm dropped, useless, to his side.
Harry knew, as Aurelia did not, that the wound was crippling. Shattered bones could sometimes heal, but ripped muscles were another matter.
Don Antonio stood there, his rapier at his feet, his good hand pressed to the bleeding wound. “Finish it.”
Greville shook his head. He kicked the fallen rapier aside. “Oh, no, Vasquez. You threatened and hurt those whom I love this night, and for that I will not give you an honorable death. You will live to enjoy my country’s hospitality.”
Harry stepped forward. “Quite a haul for the ministry,” he observed conversationally. “Come, my friend, we will utilize your carriage, since riding is probably beyond both you and your assistant.” He twisted Don Antonio’s wrists behind him, ignoring the man’s shriek as the shredded muscle caused him to scream in pain.
Harry glanced back at Greville with a quizzically raised eyebrow. “I assume you and Aurelia can manage?”
“You may make such an assumption,” Greville said, drawing her against him. “One horse will be sufficient. Tie yours to the back of the carriage.”
Harry nodded and pushed his prisoner ahead of him back to the abandoned stable yard.
Greville held Aurelia tightly for a very long time as the sun began to rise. He needed the supple feel of her body, the warmth of her skin, the wonderful, familiar scent of her. He could feel in his own body her bone-deep fatigue as her body yielded to the relief from the dreadful strain of the last hours. When at last he kissed her, it was part benediction, part gratitude, but mostly just the glorious knowledge that he held in his arms his partner, his love, the woman who completed him in every aspect of his existence.
Aurelia rested in his embrace, too tired to be anything but the recipient of his kiss. But she understood and accepted everything it meant. When he raised his head and looked into her exhausted but still steady gaze and said, “I love you, my own,” she raised a hand and traced the curve of his mouth and said, “I know, my own.”
He lifted her then onto his horse and swung up behind her. She leaned back against him, letting her head fall against his shoulder, confident that if she fell asleep, he would hold her.
“I cannot leave you,” he said, his breath whispering across her forehead. “I had thought that I could, but I cannot. You have taught me what it means to love, and what terror there is in the prospect of loss. You are all and everything to me, my love. And I will not lose you.”
She raised her hand and stroked his face. “If that’s a proper proposal, Colonel,” she murmured sleepily, “then I accept.”
He drew her tightly against him, filled with so much happiness he didn’t think he could endure it. “Another elopement seems in order,” he murmured.
Aurelia wriggled up a little on the saddle and turned her head against his shoulder. “Have you enough resilience for one more piece of information tonight, my love?”
His dark eyes were clearly visible in the early-morning light. The black shadows deeply etched beneath them merely accentuated the sharpened expression. “After what you did tonight, sweetheart, nothing you could do or say would surprise me.”
“Well, in about seven months from now you’ll be a proud papa.” She smiled at him. She thought she knew how he would respond now, but still she had just a flicker of fear that it wouldn’t be right.
Greville drew rein, bringing his horse to a stop beside the road, ignoring the blast of a coach horn as the early-morning vehicle thundered past. “Oh, my love, I do so hope I will be good at it,” he said, his eyes misted. “I promise you, I will do everything in my power to be the best father to Franny and to our child. And I will listen to you when I make mistakes. And I will make mistakes.”
“We all do,” Aurelia said, wiping his incipient tears with her fingertip. “Just as long as it pleases you.”
“Oh, yes,” he murmured. “It pleases me.”
Epilogue
JANUARY 1, 1810
THE SONOROUS CHIMES OF the long case clock faded away, and the small group seated around the table in the dining room of the house on Cavendish Square rose as one to embrace each other at the start of a new year.
Cornelia touched her glass to her husband’s, and he kissed the corner of her mouth. “That won’t do,” she whispered, circling an arm around his neck, kissing him full on the mouth.
“No,” he answered as softly. “No, it certainly won’t. I love you, Nell.”
“And I you.” She parted her lips for the kiss she had demanded.
> Alex linked the arm that held his glass around Livia’s elbow, drawing her up tight towards him, their glasses touching.
“To the New Year, my dearest love,” he murmured, drinking from his glass as she drank from hers. He tossed his glass behind him in a gesture that Livia had by now learned was a purely Russian flamboyant manifestation of celebration, although expensive when it involved fine crystal, not that Alex gave such considerations any thought. With a careless shrug she sent her own glass to the same fate and raised her face for his kiss, tasting the champagne on his lips.
“I love you, my prince.”
Greville held Aurelia close against him, reveling in her small-boned delicacy, the orange-water fragrance of her hair. He took her face in his hands, gazing down into the velvet depths of her eyes, and wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to the wondrous love he saw there, and to the depths of his love for her that seemed to grow by the moment, filling him with a happiness he would never have believed possible.
“Our New Year,” he murmured, kissing her eyelids. “I have no words for how much I love you, Aurelia.”
“We don’t need them,” she responded, kissing his mouth. “It’s not always necessary to state the obvious.”
He laughed softly as he kissed her. “You are adorable, my pragmatic wife.”
There was a hush in the room for a few moments, and then by unspoken mutual consent the couples drew apart and turned outwards to their friends. The women embraced, half laughing, half weeping at the sheer pleasure of friendship; their menfolk, rather more restrained, shook hands, but there was no denying the warmth of their connection.
“This has to become an annual tradition,” Livia announced. “We spend Christmas and New Year in Cavendish Square together with all our children. It is, after all, the place where we all found our lives and our loves.”
“You’re such a romantic, Liv,” Cornelia said with a chuckle, hugging her.
“It may be a romantic notion,” Aurelia said, “but it’s the truth nevertheless.” She touched her bosom lightly. “But on a totally unromantic note, something is telling me that Zoe needs feeding.”