by Danice Allen
Preserving an iron calm, despite his frayed nerves and Bleader’s pale-face heaving panic just across the carriage, Zachary waited for some sign from his coachman that all was well, or to hear the belligerent bellow of a masked thief demanding all their money and possessions.
When his jowly coachman, Malcolm, appeared at the window, Zach released a pent-up breath. Malcolm didn’t look terribly distressed, as would be the case if a highwayman were pointing a gun at the back of his head, but he did look a bit bothered. Zach guessed that there was a dead animal or a drunk obstructing their passage. He opened the window.
“What is it, Malcolm? Something we can help you with? Where’s John?” John was the groom, a gaunt fellow who did not possess a great deal of physical strength, thereby necessitating Zach and Bleader having to lend a hand whenever the coach got stuck.
“John’s givin’ ’er a drink o’ water, sir. Plum done-up, she is, sir!”
“Who is done-up, Malcolm?” Zachary asked, returning his pistol to its place of storage.
“A woman, sir. She was staggerin’ alongside the road. She was likely to fall under the wheels if’n we jest passed ’er by, so’s we stopped. Good thing, too. She’s got a bun in the oven, sir. Belly’s as big as a soup kettle. Looks sick an’ tired. Young’un.”
Zachary waited for no further description of this apparently wretched and unfortunate pregnant woman, but immediately stepped out of the carriage and walked swiftly round to the front of his fidgety team of chestnut horses. John was kneeling close to the ground, supporting a reclining woman and tilting a flask of water to her lips. She was blond and small, except for her ungainly stomach, the size of which could probably accommodate twins. She wore a rough woolen gown and cloak, but no bonnet or gloves, and her shoes were flimsy things filled with holes.
“Good God, what’s she doing lying on the frozen ground like that?” Zach’s voice was sharp, a reflex to the frustration that wrung his insides till they hurt. Zach had a special sort of empathy for pregnant women, particularly the friendless sort, and this one certainly looked as though she could use a friend.
“She swooned, sir,” explained John, removing the flask from the girl’s lips while she indulged in a fit of coughing. Hands on hips, legs slightly spread, Zach stood over the girl and watched and waited patiently till she was able to gain control over her ticklish throat. When she looked up at last with watery, red-rimmed eyes through a tangle of matted hair, her expression was one of bewilderment and fright.
“What’s your name, lass?” he asked her, flinching inwardly at the fear in the girl’s eyes. Why did he always feel so guilty? He’d seen that look a hundred times in the past years, and he was no more responsible for this poor girl’s condition and desperation than he’d been for all the others, yet… He supposed all the guilt was somehow connected to sweet Tessy, dead now for more than ten years.
“Please dinna touch me.” The plea was spoken so low and in such a raspy voice that Zach barely heard her. She seemed to shrink inside herself, pulling her legs up tight against her swollen belly, wrapping her skinny arms about her knees till she resembled a badly wound ball of yarn, smooth here, lumpy there.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said kindly, though firmly. He suspected she was only partially aware of her surroundings. “When did you eat last?”
She did not reply, but stared glassy-eyed at him. He tried a different tack. “Where were you going? Do you have a family, a husband perhaps? Can we take you home?”
At the mention of a husband and home, whether from an aversion to them or perhaps the complete nonexistence of such a person and place, the girl finally responded, saying testily, “Home? Naw, I will’na go home!” She dug her feet into the ground and pushed back against John’s narrow chest. She clutched his arm, never looking at him, but seeming in her disoriented state to think of John as an ally. Choosing one of them over the other, when the both of them were total strangers, did not bespeak a rational state of mind.
“She’s cup-shot, sir,” John said, his nostrils flaring and twitching. “Thought so at first, but now I know it fer a fact. Drinkin’ ’ard all day long, I’d say, sir.”
“That explains quite a lot. We had better put her in the coach,” Zach said curtly.
“Where are we takin’ ’er, sir?” Malcolm asked.
“Just where you might expect, Malcolm. To the shelter.”
Malcolm nodded sagely.
Zach frowned down at the girl. “It is the logical thing to do till she recovers from her … er … state. Perhaps when she’s feeling more the thing, she’ll tell us something about herself.”
Malcolm pushed a thumb under the brim of his three-cornered hat to scratch his scalp. “Should we tell ’er where she’s goin’, sir?”
“She’d likely not cooperate, but I don’t care a fig whether she goes willingly or not. In such a condition, she can’t be expected to know what’s best for herself and the babe. Stand back, John,” he ordered. “Malcolm, you take her feet. I’ll heft her up from under the arms.”
Zach positioned himself behind John, kneeling, tossing back the folds of his capacious redingote so that they were out of his way. He extended his hands, palms up, arms bent at the elbows, ready to take over as soon as John moved.
As the girl listened to the men’s conversation with a befuddled scowl and obvious distrust, Zach was afraid she was rallying her strength for one last show of independence. She probably understood enough to know that they intended to take her somewhere, and speculating on her possible past experiences with the male sex, she might think Zach and his servants meant to ill-use her in some painful or humiliating way. She started screaming and kicking, flinging her arms about like a panicked child who had waded too far into the water.
John bolted, and Zach caught the girl, crisscrossing his arms just above her breasts. She yelled obscenities with such piercing stridency that Zach’s ears buzzed. Her struggles reminded him of a beetle turned over on its back, the bulk of its weight all in the middle with legs and antennae writhing all about in an effort to regain a proper footing. He lifted her, dodging her flailing arms as best he could.
John and Malcolm were sharing the task at the other end, each of them wrestling with a single foot—in and out, back and forth. The girl’s energy, spurred on no doubt by the conviction that she was being kidnapped for rape or some such thing, was Herculean. Once she managed to pull her foot from out of Malcolm’s grasp and kicked him hard in the stomach. Malcolm’s “Oomph!” and beet-red face made John’s eyes widen and his grip on the young woman’s foot tighten. John couldn’t help but imagine how dreadful it would have been if the girl’s aim had been just a few inches lower!
Zach held himself as far back as possible and kept his chin up to avoid a direct hit to the face. They finally got her to the carriage door and were maneuvering the breeding, wriggling, inebriated, profanity-spewing female inside. Zach was leaning over her in this process, trying very hard to be gentle and careful, when one of the girl’s flinging fists found a mark—smack-dab in the middle of his right eye!
“Bloody hell!” he cursed beneath his breath, then laughed out loud. Still miles away from Gabby and the exasperating knack she had for attracting trouble and mischief, Zach nonetheless held his little friend entirely accountable for the injury to his eye. He had a strong feeling that this was just the beginning of an adventure that would likely leave him black and blue all over.
The Murray townhouse on Charlotte Square was lit up like Methuselah’s birthday cake, with candles aglow on every available surface. The first-story salon was especially bright, and when new arrivals stepped through the arched entryway and into the midst of the New Year’s Ball, they blinked and squinted till their eyes became accustomed to the visual melee of light, color, and movement.
Heavy crystal chandeliers hung from the ornate ceiling to bathe the dancers in lambency and upper-class, perfumed perspiration. The dipping, swaying convolution of bejewelled colorful damsels and their ma
le partners—some in full Scottish regalia, and others rigged out in the more constrained elegance of an English gentleman’s basic black—kept time to a lively waltz.
Gabrielle had begged exhaustion to spare herself a second awkward dance with the sweaty-palmed, obviously soused Captain Fitzwilliam of His Majesty’s Royal Army. Now, sitting in surprising solitude and relative peace at the periphery of all the noise and gay confusion, she grew pensive. She glanced over at the cabinet clock, standing with polished dignity against the west wall, and observed that the new year was fast approaching. It was eleven-thirty.
Sitting in a chair just next to her was Aunt Clarissa, there in body but not in thought. She was fast asleep, her gray head lulling against the purple velvet of the chair back, a soft snore percolating between her pursed lips in little pops and whistles. Gabrielle sighed. She had hoped to start the new year with a somewhat more titillating companion.
She withdrew her fan from the folds of her aquamarine skirts to stir the air near her flushed face. Gabrielle couldn’t seem to control the tiny prick of irritation she felt every time she snapped open the extremely expensive little gewgaw Rory had given her as a Christmas present. The fan was made of silk and feathers that exactly matched her gown. A score of tiny diamonds decorated the elaborately carved ivory handle. When she had opened the satin-bowed box on Christmas Eve and pushed aside the cream-colored vellum paper to find the beautiful fan, she’d felt absolutely wretched … and angry.
Knowing the delicate nature of the agreement between them, Rory should never have spent so much money on her. She had telegraphed her displeasure to him across a room full of people who were still exclaiming over the magnificence of his gift. Rory had paid her no heed at all, merely looking as innocent as he usually contrived to look in such situations.
The room was insufferably hot, and the fan wasn’t helping. Gabrielle had stealthily stepped behind a curtain just moments before to press her cheek against the frosty windowpane, and she was thinking about doing it again. If Aunt Clarissa had seen her do such an unhealthy thing, Gabrielle would have been severely reprimanded. But it was easy to elude and delude Aunt Clarissa, just as it had been easy, so far, to delude everyone in Edinburgh into believing she and Rory Cameron were in love.
Just then Rory and Regina twirled by. He was flirting with her, as he always flirted with his dancing partners, and she was giggling behind one gloved hand, her fingertips pressed delicately against her mouth. Rory winked at Gabrielle over Regina’s shoulder. Like Zach and Gabrielle, Regina and Rory had known each other since childhood, but their close friendship did not preclude that Rory abstain from flirting with her. It seemed he could not resist flirting with any woman, from the eldest dowager at any given function, to the greenest schoolroom miss.
It was understandable how everyone might easily believe Gabrielle to be in love with Rory, since there wasn’t another man in the room who could compare with him in looks. He was as tall as Zach, but more stockily built. He had dark hair and blue eyes, and a very wicked charm and smile. He wore his kilt well, to say the least. If there was something especially attractive about Scotland, thought Gabrielle, besides its brooding, beautiful countryside and friendly people, it had to be the everyday sight of wellturned male calves below a richly colored tartan kilt.
Rory’s amusements included a wide range of activities: womanizing, gambling, hunting, racing, singing, writing poetry—bad poetry, Gabrielle suspected, but then she was no literary genius—and taking every possible opportunity to indulge his penchant for the stage. It was this last characteristic of Rory’s that had brought him to Gabrielle’s notice. She shared Rory’s passion for the theatre. As a child she had frequently repined that she was too well brought up to make a career treading the boards.
One rainy afternoon in November, Gabrielle and Rory had performed together in a comic pantomime for the enjoyment of some of the Murrays’ guests. It was a spontaneous activity that proved most successful in entertaining the audience and diverting them from the sober, overcast day outside. In the process, Gabrielle and Rory, who had merely been polite acquaintances before, became fast friends. Three weeks later, much to the shock of Edinburgh’s elite society, Rory Cameron, Marquess of Lome, a confirmed bachelor of nine-and-twenty, announced himself besotted and betrothed to Gabrielle Tavistock.
Gabrielle smiled as she remembered the different reactions to their announcement. Most people probably wondered how she’d managed to bring to banns a notorious rake without the allure of either a remarkable amount of money or a remarkably stunning face and figure.
Gabrielle was well off, but not excessively wealthy. She believed she was quite pretty—she had been told as much all her life—but she knew she was not classically perfect in each feature or possessed of striking coloring. Her hair was a pleasant shade of medium blond, not flaxen or raven. Her eyes weren’t icy blue or emerald green, they were hazel. She was neither petite nor the other current favored body type, tall and willowy. She was of medium height and slender, though perhaps a little too bosomy to suit her own notions of the ideal figure. The habit of fashionable ladies to wear bustles to make their skirts fuller, however, made her boyish hips look more in proportion with her generous bust.
She had “countenance.” That’s what everyone told her. People said she radiated an infectious liveliness. But at the moment, Gabrielle felt anything but lively. She didn’t think she could keep up the facade of a sparkling, happily in love, soon-to-be-married young woman for the next four hours, which was very likely how much longer the party would continue.
She missed Zach dreadfully. She had counted on him being in Scotland by now and was confused and worried about his tardiness. She would much rather be in her bedchamber, puzzling about and missing Zach, than in a noisy, overbright, overheated room full of revelers. She had never felt so alone.
She could feign a headache. She’d already sat out one dance, hadn’t she? But first she’d cool her cheeks by dashing one more time behind the curtains. She assessed the crowd. No one was looking. She didn’t even see Regina’s parents, Sir George Murray and Lady Grace, performing their perpetual hospitable rounds of the room. Perhaps they were seeing to another smattering of late arrivals. She stood up and side-stepped nonchalantly toward the draped window embrasure, then slipped behind the gold-tasseled, green damask curtains and into the welcoming draft of cool air.
Gabrielle propped her hands on the waist-high windowsill and rested her forehead against the icy glass. The dampness felt refreshing. Light snow fell, but the flakes melted as soon as they reached ground. She closed her eyes. There was a clatter of hooves on the street below, carriage wheels grinding to a slick halt in front of the house. Lazily, automatically, she opened one eye to see who the oh-so-fashionable latecomers were.
For a moment Gabrielle felt sure she was dreaming. She couldn’t breathe. She felt as though her heart had swelled to incredible proportions and was flattening her poor, airless lungs against her ribs. Could it be? But whom had she met in Edinburgh who could possibly resemble Zach? A travel-worn Adonis stepped out of the carriage. She might be able to dream up such a gladsome sight, but the door that swung closed behind him sported the Wickham coat of arms and lent her dream the slap of reality it needed.
She finally forced her lungs to pull in a bit of air, then she immediately started to tremble. Two torches were lit at the bottom of the long flight of stairs outside and Zach moved into the fluctuating, wind-driven nimbus of light. Shadows pooled in the hollows of his cheeks and below his eyes. Orange accents flickered in the curl of longish, sunbeam-yellow hair that escaped the straight black lines of his hat.
She watched him stand at the bottom of the steps and speak to the footman at the top, no doubt explaining who he was and listening while his servants were given quick instructions. Zach always made sure his servants and the horses were well taken care of before seeing to his own comfort. Now he smiled, nodded his approval, and began to ascend the stairs.
As the li
ght from the open door spilled over him, Gabrielle registered every detail of the man she loved. His incredibly long, well-shaped legs, snugly encased in dark pantaloons, propelled him up the stairs two at a time. One hand grasped the wrought-iron railing and the other swung free. He was as graceful as a tiger—and looked like one, too, with his odd golden eyes. How she longed for those eyes to rest on her as they used to do. “Zach…” she whispered, her breath creating a circle of condensation on the glass.
Suddenly Zach stopped midway up the stairs. He stood stock-still, balanced on one neatly booted foot, the other suspended above the step just below him. He hesitated, then looked to left and right, as if he had heard himself called by name but knew not from which direction he’d been summoned. Then he looked up. Gabrielle got her wish. They were eye to eye.
He smiled. She smiled back, foolishly, deliriously happy. Then she noticed it. A dark bruise ringed Zach’s right eye. Her smile wavered. He’d been hurt!
As Gabrielle’s expression changed, Zach’s did, too, but not in the way she might have expected. Apparently comprehending that she was dismayed by his injured appearance, Zach raised both tawny brows, pointed to his purpled eye, then turned the finger back to her and shook it… as if she were somehow responsible for his injury! Gabrielle frowned in puzzlement, but Zach only threw back his head and laughed. Gabrielle’s smile returned full force. Oh, how she loved him.
Chapter Two
Rory preened in front of the oval mirror that hung on the wall of the small antechamber adjacent to the salon, straightening his cravat, pinching infinitesimal bits of lint off his brown velvet jacket. Gabrielle wrung her hands and watched impatiently. Music for a Scottish reel seeped through the walls like the strains of a ghostly orchestra, and Gabrielle’s heart thumped in rhythm to each passing second of time.