A Valentine Wedding

by Jane Feather

  “I don’t find it damnable in the least,” Alasdair said cheerfully. “I’m more than happy to put our estrangement aside.”

  “How could you possibly expect me to forget …” She fell silent and turned back to the window, her shoulders stiff, back ramrod straight.

  “I rather thought I was the injured party,” Alasdair observed, in a voice now laced with acid. “I was the one left at the altar.”

  It was no good. She could not endure it. “If you will not leave, then I shall.” Emma whirled to the door. “Harris will show you out.”

  Alasdair, with an almost leisurely movement, reached up and caught her wrist as she swept past his chair. Holding her, he rose from the chair. She was almost as tall as he, but Emma knew she couldn’t match the wiry strength in his slender frame. The fingers braceleting her wrist were not to be pried apart, and she made no attempt to do so.

  “I thought we had agreed that you were going to accept this situation with a good grace,” Alasdair said. “You will simply make yourself ridiculous if you don’t.”

  “It really pleases you to be able to taunt me with that, doesn’t it?” she said bitterly.

  “You forget, my dear Emma, that having once been made to appear ridiculous myself, I have an expert’s knowledge of its discomforts. I merely wish to warn you of them, that is all.” His eyes held hers, and they were bitter and angry, and a muscle twitched beside his thinned mouth.

  “How dare you blame me for that!” Emma exclaimed. “After what you did … you would have expected me to endure … to pretend …” The words caught in her throat and now she pulled at her captive wrist.

  Rather to her surprise, it was instantly released. Alasdair turned from her and picked up his hat, gloves, and whip. When he spoke, his voice was cool and even.

  “Whatever you may think of the situation, it exists. I have certain responsibilities for your welfare, and you are going to have to accept that I am going to be a significant presence in your life. I came this afternoon to discover if the house suits you … if you’re quite well after your journey … to ascertain that you had no nasty adventures with highwaymen and such like—the gentlemen of the road have been very busy over Finchley Common these days—and to see if you have any commissions for me to execute. I came, in short, to pay a visit of courtesy and friendship.” He bowed with ironic formality and a sweeping flourish of his hat.

  Emma stood unconsciously holding her wrist, where she could still feel the warm impress of his fingers. Alasdair was regarding her in silence, his green gaze harrowed but steady. Emma knew what he was doing. He was trying to put her out of countenance with his protestations of friendship and courtesy; trying to make her feel churlish and childish because she couldn’t or wouldn’t respond with maturity to an impossible situation.

  “I have no interest in your friendship,” she said coldly. “But I will answer courtesy with courtesy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go and help Maria supervise the unpacking.” She offered him a bow as ironically formal as his had been.

  Alasdair gave a half shrug as if the matter no longer interested him. “As you please.” He drew on his gloves, smoothing the fine leather over his fingers. “Since you’re clearly occupied now, I’ll call upon you in the morning to discuss how you wish your allowance to be paid. Whether quarterly or monthly. It’s up to you.”

  “We have not as yet discussed my needs,” Emma said stiffly. “That should surely come first.”

  Alasdair paused on his way to the door. “I had reached a decision on that myself. I will impart it to you tomorrow. I give you good day, ma’am.”

  The door closed behind him. Emma, flushed with anger, went to the window. She watched him emerge from the house, climb into the curricle, and take the reins from his tiger. The street was now clear and he gave his horses the office to start, his hands dropping with a motion that was almost hasty and which set his team surging forward, too fast for the narrow street. He checked them immediately, but it was clear to Emma that Alasdair was as angry as she was.

  They couldn’t be in the same room together anymore without this bitter antagonism. They had hurt each other too deeply in the past ever to recover even a semblance of ease in each other’s company. Ned had known that. So why had he made such a disposition? He had loved his sister, and he had loved his friend. Why would he choose to make them both miserable?

  There was only one answer. Ned had believed that by throwing them together in this hideous fashion, the chemistry that had always been between them would reignite. He had been overjoyed at their engagement and devastated at its breaking. He had reproached neither of them openly, and had stayed close to them both, scrupulously refusing to take sides, but he hadn’t been able to hide his sorrow and disappointment.

  Emma left the salon and made her way to the front bedchamber on the floor above. Her maid was in the midst of unpacking. Gowns lay on the bed, draped over chairbacks and the arms of the chaise longue standing beneath the window. Shoes, fans, scarves littered every surface.

  “Lord love us, Lady Emma, but I never would have realized we’d brought so much with us,” Mathilda said, laying an armful of linen into a drawer of the armoire. “And I’ll lay any wager that you won’t be wearin’ a stitch of this stuff once you’ve been to the silk warehouses and the milliners and the bootmakers.”

  “You’re probably right, Tilda,” Emma said. “Everything must be hopelessly out of fashion.” News of Ned’s death had reached them only in November. Dispatches from Portugal took a long time a-coming. She had been in Hampshire throughout the summer and had stayed on through the beginning of the London season while lawyers had dealt with probate and the entail. In her grief, she’d had no interest in the fashion periodicals over which Maria pored, no interest in society gossip, had been content to live in riding dress and the light mourning she’d been obliged to adopt to receive condoling visitors.

  But now she was tired of black and lavender and dove gray. It was time to return to the fashionable world. Eyebrows might be raised at such a swift putting off of mourning, but Emma, like her brother, had never cared a fig for public opinion, and she had a shrewd suspicion that public opinion would overlook any impropriety when it came with such a vast fortune. Flouting convention would be viewed as an interesting eccentricity.

  She left Tilda to her unpacking and went into the next-door boudoir. Her writing case had been set out on the secretaire, and a footman was lighting the candles on the mantelpiece. A fire burned brightly in the hearth, and the room seemed a haven of quiet and order compared with the rest of the house.

  She sat down at the desk and opened the case. Her fingers went, as they always did these days, to the fold of leather where she kept her private correspondence. She drew out the oiled parchment packet and sat with it in her hands, looking at the rusty stains of Ned’s blood.

  Then she slid the sheet of paper out of the parchment and opened it carefully. It was unlike any correspondence she’d ever received from Ned before. It was a poem of some kind, clearly one he’d written himself, and Ned was no poet, even the most partial sister had to admit that. It was really a very bad poem. Had he meant it as a joke? And why was there no covering letter?

  Emma dashed a hand across her eyes. She refolded the sheet of paper, replaced it in the parchment, and slid it back into her writing case. Whatever he’d meant by it, she would never discover now. But this was all she had left of him—the last concrete thing she possessed of her brother. It had Ned’s blood on it. And she would treasure it.

  Maybe Alasdair would see the point of the poem. He understood Ned in ways different from Emma’s ways. And Alasdair always had answers to everything. It was another of his infuriating characteristics. He wasn’t always right, but he was always forcefully convinced that he was. So much so that people tended to go along with him. She and Ned had been rare exceptions. But then, they knew Alasdair Chase better than anyone.

  Or at least, Emma amended, Ned might have done. She had deceived herse
lf into believing that she knew him … could trust him absolutely.

  Emma rose from the secretaire and went to the fire. She rested a hand on the mantel and stood looking down at the flames, remembering the first time she’d met Alasdair Chase. She’d been eight years old that summer when Ned had brought his friend home from Eton for the long vacation. And she’d fallen instantly in love with the fourteen-year-old Alasdair, trailing after him the entire summer like a devoted puppy. He’d had his own style even then. The daredevil carelessness that still marked him, still made him so attractive … so dangerous.

  He’d encouraged Ned to get up to all kinds of mischief. They’d roamed the forest at night, watching badgers and foxes; they’d taken sailing boats out onto the Solent in every kind of wild weather, under the moon and under the sun. They’d ridden the earl’s unbroken hunters and taken guns from the gun room, disappearing for hours at a time on shooting excursions, sending the household into a frenzy of panic. But somehow Alasdair’s charm had always averted the worst consequences. His charm and his undoubted competence. The unbroken hunter became as putty under his hands; he was a superb shot and never returned to the house without a full game bag; he swam like a fish and sailed like a mariner. And he seemed unafraid of anything.

  The earl, like everyone else, had fallen under his spell. Alasdair’s insouciant lawlessness had gone unpunished, and Ned had grown ever bolder in his friend’s image. After that summer, Alasdair had become a permanent visitor to Grantley Manor. His own father was not interested in him. His brothers were all much older than he. His mother was a broken dab of a woman who probably didn’t notice whether her youngest son came home for the school holidays or not. Quite who had decided that Alasdair would make his home with Ned’s family, no one really knew. But Emma guessed it was Alasdair himself.

  Emma had attached herself to her brother and his friend with limpetlike determination. And most times they’d accepted her with the lofty carelessness of youths basking in the hero worship of their juniors.

  A log fell in the hearth, breaking Emma’s reverie. She bent to poke it back, the heat warming her face. It was music that had wrought the change in their relationship. Music that had prompted Alasdair to treat her as an equal. Oh, he’d continued to tease her, continued to behave toward her with the casual ease of long friendship, but at some point, before she’d even begun to put up her hair, he had started to take her seriously.

  He’d heard her playing one afternoon, at the point when she had discovered that music was no longer a drudgery of practice and scales but a source of delight. Until that moment, Alasdair had played only for himself, at night when the house was quiet. He had never revealed his gift. Only Ned knew of it, knew that his friend used music to ease his black moods, the waves of loneliness that came over him sometimes. And not even Ned understood how completely Alasdair used music to express all his emotions.

  Emma had discovered that quickly enough. She and Alasdair shared both the passion and the need. And they were equally matched. Throughout the season of their engagement, they had played together, sometimes purely for their own pleasure, but often for the pleasure of others. They had become a regular entertainment at soirees and country house parties. Until everything went bad….

  Who was Alasdair’s light-of-love this time?

  The question reared its sickening head and Emma turned away from the fire. It was certain he had one. Alasdair always had a woman in his life. In fact, more than one, she reflected bitterly. The last she’d heard, it had been a Lady Melrose. A woman of a certain age and a most definite reputation. The affairs of Lord Alasdair were frequently the latest on-dit. He was supposed to be penniless, but he lived like a man blessed with a considerable fortune. He was a rake. An insouciant, enterprising, utterly charming and irredeemable rake. And society loved him for it.

  The house on Half Moon Street contained a twisted tangle of narrow corridors and small, low-pitched rooms. The fire in the small parlor abovestairs was smoking, the candles guttering as the January wind forced its way under the ill-fitting door and around the windowpanes.

  The two men in the room stood huddled in greatcoats around the fire. One of them had a rasping cough that was not helped by the smoke.

  “This is an infernal climate!” he said. “I don’t know how you can live in it, Paolo.” He spoke English but with a heavy accent and addressed a much younger man, dressed fashionably in pale gray pantaloons, a coat of blue superfine, a gray silk waistcoat. His gold-tasseled hessians gleamed in the firelight.

  “One becomes used to it, Luiz.” The younger man shrugged, sounding almost bored. He had no trace of an accent, but there was something about his features, the olive skin and dark eyes, that lent an exotic cast to his appearance.

  “To be sure, you were born here,” Luiz said. “I suppose it makes a difference.” He didn’t sound convinced. He raised an eyeglass and examined his companion. “You certainly look the part. As fine as any of these London gentlemen. You think you can play it?”

  “I can play it,” Paolo said with the same slight air of boredom. “I can play the dandy as well as any of them.” He laughed, his lip curling. “I can safely promise that no one will ever suspect the truth of my origins.”

  The door opened behind them and both men turned from the fire. A tall, imposing figure entered, kicking the door closed behind him. He drew his caped greatcoat around him. “It’s cold enough in here to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” he stated crisply, with only the faintest trace of an accent. “Build up the fire, Luiz.”

  Luiz hastened to obey, throwing logs onto the flames. Unfortunately the wood was green and gusts of smoke billowed out, sending Luiz into a paroxysm of coughing.

  The new arrival ignored this. He tossed his hat onto a stool and strode to the table where reposed a flagon of wine and glasses. He raised a glass and examined it in the light of the candle, then fastidiously wiped it with his kerchief before filling it from the bottle. As if his action granted general permission, his companions hastened to follow his example.

  They drank in silence, then the new arrival raised his own eyeglass and subjected Paolo to close scrutiny. “Yes, you will do well,” he said. He reached into the front of his greatcoat and drew out a sheaf of papers. “Here is your background. It should not be hard for you to memorize.”

  Paolo took the papers. “Easier, I trust, than the Italian diplomat,” he said, riffling through the documents. “The intricacies of Italian politics were not easy to master, Governor.”

  The man thus addressed merely nodded and drank his wine. “The woman moves in the best circles. Your background as a French émigré of impeccable credentials will give you entree into the upper echelons of this society. Princess Esterhazy will arrange for your vouchers for Almack’s. She has been apprised of your arrival and believes you to be the scion of an old family with loose connections to her husband’s. You will visit her as soon as you have mastered your background. It will be well if you produce a hint of a French accent. Your fluent English is, of course, explained by your émigré status. You have grown up in the English countryside but now wish to take your place in society.”

  The governor shrugged and set his glass on the table. “You will find yourself in good company. And hanging out for a rich wife—such a vulgar expression,” he said with a grimace of distaste, “is considered a perfectly legitimate occupation, indeed a laudable one, for the young men whose ranks you will join.”

  “You have not as yet told me my mission,” Paolo said, regarding his superior over the lip of his glass. “What am I to do with this rich young woman?”

  The governor walked over to the fire. He bent to warm his hands at the sullen flame. “We have reason to believe she holds something that would be of interest to us. Wellington’s spring campaign plans that were being sent to his masters in London. Her brother billowed into the room. He shivered into his greatcoat and glanced toward the small window where a leafless branch scratched against the pane. It was not a ch
eerful sound.

  “You will take up residence in lodgings on Albermarle Street.” The governor withdrew another paper from his pocket. “Here is the lease. The lodgings are not grand, but adequate, and the rooms below you are taken by a nobleman of impeccable lineage if somewhat doubtful financial status. He also happens to be closely connected to the young lady in question, and was a dear friend and confidant of her brother. You will make of him a friend.”

  “I see.” Paolo nodded, running an eye over the lease. “It seems I shall be more comfortable than poor Luiz here.”

  “Undoubtedly.” It was an arid agreement. The governor picked up his hat again and looked ready to depart.

  “It would perhaps be helpful if I knew what I was looking for?” Paolo said with a raised eyebrow.

  “We don’t know exactly. Edward Beaumont was an artful courier. He knew how to disguise his wares.” He shrugged. “It is imperative that we lay hands on it if it’s still in existence. The whole outcome of the Peninsula campaign depends upon it. You may be certain the emperor will reward such information … which reminds me.” He dug deep into his pocket and drew out a leather pouch. He tossed it onto the table. It fell with a heavy clink. “Should you need further funds, they will be forthcoming.”

  With that the governor nodded to both men and departed.

  Luiz shivered again. “And you know who’ll get the billowed into the room. He shivered into his greatcoat and glanced toward the small window where a leafless branch scratched against the pane. It was not a cheerful sound.

  “You will take up residence in lodgings on Al-bermarle Street.” The governor withdrew another paper from his pocket. “Here is the lease. The lodgings are not grand, but adequate, and the rooms below you are taken by a nobleman of impeccable lineage if somewhat doubtful financial status. He also happens to be closely connected to the young lady in question, and was a dear friend and confidant of her brother. You will make of him a friend.”