She smiled at the thought, wondering where he was, how close he was to Malta, and thus to returning home. Titania caught sight of that smile and set her teacup down.
“Ho, ho…well, my dear. And there is a story behind that.”
Angelique could not stop herself from smiling more as she poured herself a fresh cup of Darjeeling. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“That cat-got-the-cream smile of yours…I’ve only seen it once before, when you first had Anthony Carrington in your web. Might that smile have anything to do with a certain Scottish sea captain I have heard tell of? A certain Captain Jack?”
Angelique laughed out loud to hear the ridiculous false name that Prinny had given him. She set her cup down in case she might spill the lukewarm tea on herself.
“His name is James.”
“Much better! Much more dignified.”
“Well, I don’t know that I would go that far.”
“The gossips say he is an Adonis with a brogue, a man of few words but glorious action.”
Angelique leaned back against the soft cushions of her chair, smiling into the fire. “I can attest to that. Though with me, he talks quite a bit.”
“Well, a lovely change from Anthony on both counts then.”
Angelique shot her friend a wry look, and Titania held up both hands in surrender. “You’ll never hear a good word from me about your ex-lover, and you know it. He led you a merry chase for ten years.”
“That he did.”
“A man worth his salt would have the sense to chase you.”
Angelique could not stop smiling. “So it seems. James followed me from London all the way to Shropshire.”
“Did he indeed?” Titania leaned forward so that her generous cleavage was on display, though sadly, there were no men present to see it. “And where is this paragon of manly virtue and good sense now?”
“Somewhere between Gibraltar and Malta, I imagine.”
Titania looked shocked, and Angelique laughed out loud. “He is a man of the sea, after all.”
“When does he come back?”
“In a month.”
“You should be done here by then.”
“I’ll be done here within the week. I’ll see Arabella safely wed, and then I will go home.”
Angelique did not mention her business troubles and the damage Hawthorne had done to her shipping contacts. She would keep producing plays as long as she had the lucre, so there was no need to alarm Titania about Hawthorne’s attack on her life. At least, not yet. Arabella was enough to worry about for the moment.
Titania set her cup down, and Angelique thought that her friend would return to her rooms at the inn, leaving her to sleep. But a shadow passed over the beautiful green of Titania’s eyes. Angelique felt a frisson of fear as her friend took her hand.
“I have news that will be hard for you to hear. Victor Carlyle was shot and killed the night before his wedding.”
“Dear God,” Angelique breathed. “Who would do such a thing?”
“I can think of any number of foes. Victor was not one for making friends, but he collected enemies by the dozen.”
Angelique felt her mind go numb. Victor was larger than life. She had trouble believing that he was dead. She simply could not wrap her mind around it.
“He was good to me.”
“I know. You have always said so. That was why I wanted to be the one to tell you, before you heard the news from some more malicious source. He tweaked the wrong nose at last.”
Titania pressed her hand before rising to don her cloak. When Angelique moved to ring for Mrs. Beebe, Titania waved her away. “No, let the poor woman sleep. There is no need to rouse her on my account.”
Angelique escorted her friend to the door, thinking of Victor Carlyle and of how he had been her lifeline during the dark days after Anthony left. Victor had been a fool and a blackguard, but she had cared for him.
“So Victor’s fiancée is unmarried still,” Titania said. “A narrow escape for the young miss, if you ask me.”
“Victor would have made her life a misery,” Angelique said.
Titania did not speak again but pressed a light kiss to Angelique’s cheek before she climbed into her carriage. Her unofficial crest was emblazoned in silver on the lacquered door, the symbol of her company, the Bard’s quill pen.
Angelique closed the house and banked the fire in the sitting room. Before she went up the narrow staircase to her bedroom, she remembered the teachings of her mother. She lit a candle for Victor Carlyle and said a prayer for his soul, on the off chance that anyone was listening.
Thirty
James had to push his horse in order to make his way to the wilds of Derbyshire before Midsummer’s Eve. He was a Scottish baronet’s son and no stranger to traveling north from London, but he had always traveled home by ship, never by horse. To be confined to the vagaries of land travel made him chafe against its limitations, but Derbyshire was landlocked, so he rode his rented gelding north.
He carried in his pocket a star sapphire that he had purchased in Mayfair before leaving London. The ring was a delicate platinum band, very plain but for the five-carat stone it bore. Come all the way from India, that sapphire was the only jewel in any shop he had entered that came close to matching the deep blue of Angelique’s eyes.
Angelique loved him, he was sure of it. It might take him a week or two to wear her down, but in the end, she would surrender.
She would be his.
James was not certain why he was so confident. Angelique was the least biddable woman ever to be born on the face of God’s earth. She would guard her life and her property like a tigress and would fight against marriage and the laws that would make all her property his. James had a solution to that, too, once she deigned to listen to him.
Though he loved her, he had not known her long. But did one ever come to fully know a woman like her? She was a mystery that revealed only as much of herself as she saw fit in any given moment. Angelique might never reveal all of herself to him, but James knew that he would rather spend his life coaxing glimpses out of her. Life with Angelique would never be dull.
What marriage would mean to his career, he could not say. Franklin and his wife had shown him that love and the sea could live together, but he was not certain he could leave Angelique for months on end. There was something about her that drew him in and held him. Though he had tried to escape her pull over and over again, she brought him back to her as inexorably as the moon brought in the tide.
James arrived in the small village of Pembroke to find it overrun with Londoners, just as Carlyle had said. He saw actors eating their lunch on the green and well-dressed ladies perusing the wares of the shops along the village high street. He did not stop at the inn, for he had no doubt that it was filled to capacity and had been for the last week.
A lady he had met at a ball in London smiled and nodded to him as he passed. He tipped his hat to her as he rode on, though he could not remember her name. He hoped Angelique did not listen to village gossip. He would hate to have her hear of his coming before he had seen her himself.
He turned his horse toward the cottage Angelique had rented. He had remembered the need for a ring, so he had not set off at dawn after leaving Carlyle in his cups as he had planned. He went instead to see Mr. Smythe, who had been very accommodating once again, giving him Angelique’s location as well as letters of business for her to read. Smythe had seemed very distracted, almost worried when James had come to see him in his office in London. Of course, had James been tied to a desk all day and night, he might seem nervous, too.
But something told James it was more than that, and when he pressed him, the other man gave way and told him all. The Duke of Hawthorne was not a rival for Angelique’s affections after all, it seemed. But he still needed killing.
James pushed
away the dark thoughts he had brought with him from London, for he had a plan and would defeat Hawthorne at his own game, whether Angelique wanted his help or not.
Thinking of how spitting mad she would be when he stood up to defend her left a satisfied smile on James’s face as he dismounted and opened the blue wooden gate to Angelique’s cottage. From the outside, the stone walls revealed nothing of the beauty they held. The flower garden alone made him stop and take in the scent of honeysuckle and roses. The cottage itself looked like a place that had been set under an enchantment, its clean, whitewashed walls and thatched roof like a house in a fairy story.
He knocked at the front door after tying his horse to the post outside. The gelding began to eat the greenery closest to the house, a bit of ivy and bramble that hopefully the gardener would not miss. He had no time to deal with his mount, however, for instead of the housekeeper, he was greeted by Lisette, Angelique’s lady’s maid.
“Captain Montgomery.” Lisette smiled, her light-blue eyes taking him in with a glint of mischief. “I thought we might be seeing you again, but I did not expect you until we returned to London.”
“I had a change of plans. I understand that the Countess of Devonshire is here in Pembroke.”
“And you came hundreds of miles to woo her and make her your own.”
James weighed his options and decided not to lie. “Yes.”
Lisette’s smile widened but she did not let him in. “You are welcome, but you cannot come in. The house is tiny and the mistress will know you’re here. You must surprise her at the play this evening. She is too busy to see you until then anyway.”
“Surprise her among her fancy friends? I suppose I might do that. But the inn is full.”
“No worry, Captain. We hold a room at the inn for Mr. Smythe. He has letters for the lady, and she expects him within the week. You may take his room.”
“I have the letters with me.”
“Très bien.” Lisette’s smile was the warmest he had ever seen it. “Madame has been a bit down since you left, Captain. She is a strong woman, but like all women, she needs a good man.”
James knew very well what Angelique would make of that assessment, but he did not correct the maid. “I reckon I’m good enough.”
Lisette perused him from his auburn hair in its queue to the dust on his boots and shrugged one shoulder in her Gallic way. “You will do, Captain.”
He laughed as she closed the door in his face.
***
Angelique spent the morning in Pembroke Village while Sara worked on her reading with Lisette and her embroidery under Mrs. Beebe’s careful eye. Angelique enjoyed spending time with her ward, but she was restless. Seeing Anthony with Caroline, and Arabella reunited with her Pembroke, had made her hunger for James Montgomery in the dark reaches of the night.
Usually, she kept an iron grip on her imagination, even in her dreams, but last night she could not sleep for remembering his touch on her skin, the way his calloused hands had felt on her naked flesh. She had spent the night in a torment of fiery memory only to fall asleep toward dawn to dream of him as well.
The dream was still with her as she sat and watched the rehearsal for Titania’s play. She could not hear much of what was spoken onstage, for her mind was filled with the memory of James Montgomery’s voice, the Scottish cadence that came to his lips whenever he was lost to the pleasure that she and her body brought him.
She was lost in thoughts of him when a shadow fell over her where she sat on the village green. It was almost noon, so the shadow blocked the welcome warmth of the sun. Angelique looked up, drawn out of her reverie, to find Anthony Carrington standing beside her chair.
“I do not understand why you have come,” Anthony said.
He had never been one to mince words. That had not troubled her when they had been together, for she had been certain that his terse manner had hidden a depth of feeling. She realized now that she had been right on that score, but those feelings had simply not been directed at her.
He had wanted her, though. She wondered idly if he still wanted her now, if he had approached her with rudeness simply to engage her in conversation. Anthony had never been one for games, but perhaps that had changed. He was a man, after all. She turned in her chair to face him, shading her eyes from the sun beneath her lace-trimmed bonnet.
“Indeed,” she said. “How kind of you to inquire, my lord. I am an investor in this production. If you object to my presence, feel free to remove yourself and your wife at once.”
He did not answer with a snide comment of his own. Instead, he drew a chair up and sat down beside her. “How did we come to this?” Anthony asked.
Silence lengthened between them. The actors onstage kept up with their antics. The rustics were producing the play within the play, Angelique’s favorite moment in Shakespeare’s romantic foolery. She found that she could not listen to the actors on the boards, though that scene never failed to make her laugh.
She was not miserable as she should have been sitting next to the man she had once thought was the love of her life. She had clung to that notion long after she had lost him, long after he had moved on with another. She realized now that she had given that idea up when she had first met James Montgomery.
“I do not know,” Angelique said. “I mean you and yours no harm. I am willing to begin again.”
He took her hand in his. For the first time in years, there was no heat between them and no rancor. As she turned to look into his eyes, she found that his deep brown gaze no longer had the power to wound her.
That knowledge made her generous and more forgiving of Anthony Carrington than she had ever been. She knew as she looked into her old lover’s eyes that he would never wield power over her again. All that was left was the memory of the love she had once borne him. She discovered, much to her surprise, that the memory was sweet.
“Peace then.” She let her hand rest in his, waiting patiently until he let her go.
“Peace.”
They sat in silence side by side, her hands folded demurely in her lap, as proper as if she had never been his mistress at all. She felt the eyes of the ton on them, as well as the gazes of actors who had stepped off the stage, and she suppressed a smile.
Perhaps she might single-handedly replace all the evil gossip about Arabella with gossip of her own. Within the half hour, every lady and lord in the village would be convinced that the Earl of Ravensbrook had come to Derbyshire not to support Pembroke but to take her up as a lover once more. She felt laughter threaten to rise from beneath her breast and she tamped it down.
“I wonder that I find you here alone. I understand you are quite fond of a young sea captain, the gentleman I met at the Prince Regent’s card party. Captain Jack, I believe his name was.”
“Do not let him hear you call him that.”
“He has heard me call him that already.”
Angelique smiled. She no longer wanted this man, but she was surprised as well as gratified to discover that Anthony had kept such close tabs on her love life.
“Captain Montgomery is away at the moment on the sea. I am here alone.”
“By choice,” Anthony said.
“Yes. Everything I do is by my own choice now.”
Anthony opened his mouth only to close it again. Awkwardness rose between them, and Angelique knew that it was for her to dispel it. She bore this man no ill will. She had a life of her own apart from him. She could afford to be generous, in spite of all that she had lost.
“It is forgiven,” she said. “If I had anything to forgive you for, Anthony, it is long past. We may let it rest there and bury it.”
He did not speak another word but raised her gloved hand to his lips. He stood and bowed formally, as if they sat in her mother’s drawing room.
She knew that she was truly over him when she was not even tempted to me
ntion her troubles with Hawthorne. Anthony had steered her into safe waters many times during her early days as a woman of business. He had helped her, and nurtured her, and would have helped her now. But she did not ask him.
He left her alone once more in the warmth of the early-afternoon light. The rehearsal was winding down. Angelique had missed most of the last act, but she had seen enough to know that the show would be a hit.
She kept her eyes politely on the stage even as she listened to the swell of whispers rising around and behind her. She and Anthony made excellent fodder for the gossip mill. She was relieved to be at Arabella’s service in that small way. Distracting the gossipmongers from her friend gave the day a sense of satisfaction that it had lacked before. Angelique supposed she had Anthony to thank for that.
She caught Titania’s eye where she stood in full costume at the foot of the makeshift stage. The actress offered her an inscrutable smile and gave her a wink.
Thirty-one
With Anthony gone, Angelique stayed seated beneath the trees of the green. She had begun to contemplate how well she and Anthony had learned to handle themselves with each other, and how the fact that he had never loved her no longer had the power to tear her heart out. Every time that old loop of thought rose into the forefront of her mind, the thought of a broad-shouldered Scot with auburn hair replaced it almost at once.
She did not have long to consider this, because Hawthorne loomed over her in the next moment like an ogre in a fairy story. A sick, sinking sense of dread drained into her stomach, but she forced herself to meet his eyes anyway.
So much for finding a haven in sleepy Derbyshire villages. Give her Shropshire and the banks of the Severn any day.
“I am surprised to find you blithely wiling away the hours in Derbyshire when your shipping business burns behind you in London.”
Angelique straightened her back, crooking her neck to the side so that she might give the duke a mocking smile. “Indeed, Your Grace, I do not have as dark an opinion of my business as you do.”
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