Velvet

by Jane Feather

  Nathaniel’s breath whistled through his teeth, but Gabrielle calmly withdrew the pouch from inside her shirt and shook out the required sum into the master’s open hand. “I believe you’ll find that to be correct. Be careful with my horse.”

  The master solemnly counted the coins, then turned and shouted orders to his seamen. Within half an hour Gabrieile’s terrified horse had been hoisted aboard in a canvas sling and securely tethered in the stern of the boat.

  Only then did Nathaniel speak. “Come below.” It was a sharp command.

  Gabrielle followed him down the companionway and into a small, sparsely furnished but clean cabin with a small porthole and two bunks set into the bulwark.

  Nathaniel closed the door with a controlled slam and stood with his shoulders against it, regarding Gabrielle in fulminating silence. “Dear God,” he exclaimed at last, “you ought to be beaten, Gabrielle!”

  “Well, that’s a fine thing to say, when I’ve just saved your skin,” she retorted. “And for the second time too.”

  “I wonder why it is that my skin needs saving only when you’re around,” he declared dourly.

  “Oh, that is so unjust,” she protested. “It has nothing to do with me, and you know it.”

  He did, but was not yet ready to admit to anything. “I forbade you absolutely to come with me.”

  “Did you?” She glanced around the cabin with an air of interest. “Which bunk do you want?”

  He ignored this. “Just what story did you spin to explain leaving your godfather?”

  “The truth,” she said, smiling blandly.

  “What!”

  “My godfather has infinite tolerance for the weaknesses of the flesh,” she told him in perfect truth. “I told him I wished to pursue a liaison with Benedict Lubienski. I told him we were intending to spend some private time in Danzig, and I would decide where I would go next when we had satisfied each other.”

  Nathaniel stared at her. It was so damnably reasonable. She was no ingenue. She was a widow who’d had lovers in the past. Talleyrand was a man of the world. Napoleon had his Marie Walewska. Josephine wrote to him daily with endless protestations of jealousy. Talleyrand had innumerable liaisons. There was absolutely no reason why such a story shouldn’t be believed … particularly when it bore the mark of truth.

  “So I rode out ahead of you,” she continued into his stupefied silence. “And arranged passage to Copenhagen on this ship. And then I assume well be able to get passage on an English commercial vessel to London, don’t you think?”

  She had simply put his own plan into operation. Simply and most efficiently.

  “Come here and let me take a proper look at that gash on your arm,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s all right … it’s just a flesh wound,” she responded cheerfully, recognizing his tacit acceptance and agreement in this oblique change of subject and perfectly prepared to settle for just that.

  “I said come here!” Nathaniel bellowed, his temper finally loosened from the reins.

  Gabrielle crossed the small space in two hasty steps. “There’s no need to shout at me like that.”

  “I don’t seem to have any other way of expressing my frustration,” he gritted, unwrapping the cravat from her arm.

  “I love you,” Gabrielle said calmly. “And I’ve made my choice, and I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. I’m quite happy to wait while you become accustomed to the idea, but I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to it in my company. Because where you go, I go.”

  Nathaniel observed judiciously, “This may be a flesh wound, but it needs washing.”

  “Does it?” she responded, regarding him with her head on one side. “Have you become accustomed to the idea yet?”

  Nathaniel dropped her arm and took her head between his hands, his fingers twisting in her hair. “Yes,” he said savagely. “I know when I’m defeated. I accept the fact that I’m stuck with you. We’ll see if that Danish robber on deck has the authority to perform a marriage service.”

  “Is that a proposal, sir?”

  “No, it’s not a proposal. It’s a damn statement. It’s past time I took the initiative around here.”

  “Oh, well, be my guest,” Gabrielle said. “I must say I’m getting a little tired of making all the decisions.”

  His fingers tightened in her hair, holding her head in a viselike grip. His eyes burned with a passionate intensity. “You are sure, Gabrielle? Sure you love me … sure you embrace all I stand for? Sure you’re willing to trust me with your love?”

  “Yes,” she affirmed. “I’m certain of all those things. Are you also certain?”

  Nathaniel nodded. “I’m still terrified, but I know that I love you and I will do everything I can to make you happy.”

  He brought his mouth to hers, and Gabrielle thought, the instant before she was lost in the hard assertion of his kiss, that it was only the smallest white lie, the most technical of deceptions on which their future rested.

  25

  An ant was crawling up the back of Mr. Jeffrys’s rusty black gown. In a minute it would reach his shoulder and then crawl onto his neck. He had a scrawny neck, like a chicken’s, and it was dirty too. His white collar always had a dark ring around it.

  Jake dreamily watched the ant’s progress, wondering what the schoolmaster would do when it touched his skin. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice and it would crawl down inside his shirt and bite him.

  Jake grinned to himself, hugging this pleasurable thought. Perhaps it was a poisonous ant and the bite would swell up and Mr. Jeffrys would have a fever and have to go to bed. Perhaps it would be so bad, he’d decide to leave Burley Manor and go back where he came from.

  A fly buzzed against the windowpane, and Mr. Jeffrys’s chalk squeaked on the blackboard. Jake frowned at the long series of numbers appearing beneath the chalk. In a minute Mr. Jeffrys would tell him to come up and work the sum out for himself and he wouldn’t be able to do it because he didn’t understand long division. He thought he might have been able to understand it if the schoolmaster didn’t drone on and on in that horrible thin, flat voice.

  It was warm in the schoolroom. Mr. Jeffrys had a loathing of fresh air—he said it was bad for his chest or something. Papa and Gabby loved to be outside. Papa had been away for a long time now. Jake wondered where Gabby was. Papa had said she had to stay in Paris and it wasn’t anything to do with Jake that she couldn’t come back with them. But Jake sometimes thought Papa had been fibbing ….

  Tears pricked behind his eyes and he blinked them away rapidly. He always felt like crying when he thought of Gabby. She was so warm and she was always laughing and she had such lovely clothes and she smelled of roses ….

  “Ow!” He sat up with a cry of pain, rubbing his knuckles. Mr. Jeffrys stood glaring at him, tapping his swishy stick on the edge of the desk.

  “Master Praed, perhaps you would favor me with your attention,” the schoolmaster said with one of his nasty yellow smiles that wasn’t a smile at all. He gestured to the blackboard with his stick. “Perhaps you would do me the great honor of completing the sum I’ve begun.”

  Wiping his eyes with the back of his smarting hand, Jake went reluctantly to the board and picked up the chalk. The figures meant nothing to him, and he stared at them blankly.

  “Dear me,” murmured Mr. Jeffrys, coming up behind him. He was standing so close, Jake could feel his breath stirring his hair and he could smell that sour-milk smell that seemed to hang around him. “We haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said the entire afternoon, have we, Master Praed?”

  Jake wrinkled his nose, trying not to breathe in too deeply. His stomach knotted with tension as he waited for the inevitable tirade. The words were not so much angry as hurtful, like little darts that buried themselves in his skin. It made him feel sick, and he stared at the white chalk figures, holding himself very still.

  The sound of carriage wheels on the gravel below carried faintly through the sealed window. Mr. Jeffrys paused in
full sarcastic flood and walked to the window.

  “It seems his lordship has arrived,” he observed, tapping the stick in the palm of his hand. “I’m sure he’ll be very grieved to hear of your lack—” He stopped in astonishment as Jake abandoned his chastened position at the blackboard and ran to the window. He jumped on tiptoe to look out.

  “Gabby! It’s Gabby!” Before the outraged tutor could say or do anything, he’d bolted from the room, his feet resounding on the stairs as he hurled himself down them.

  Mr. Jeffrys gathered his gown around him and marched downstairs in the wake of his errant pupil.

  “Gabby … Gabby … Gabby …” Jake catapulted into Mrs. Bailey as he flew across the hall. Bartram had the front door open and jumped aside as the child shoved past him, almost tumbling down the steps to the gravel sweep.

  Gabby had just alighted from the chaise and was leaning in to reach for something. His father stood behind her. There was another chaise standing on the gravel, but Jake didn’t take this in at first in his joy.

  “Gabby!” he bellowed again.

  She spun around. “Jake!” Her arms went around him as he leaped against her, and she lifted him off the ground. “My, you have grown,” she said, kissing his cheek. “I can hardly lift you now.”

  “That’s ’cause I’m seven,” the child gabbled. “Where’ve you been? Have you come back to stay?”

  “I realize I run a poor second after Gabrielle,” Nathaniel said, sounding amused, “but how about a greeting for your father.”

  Laughing, Gabrielle set Jake on his feet. There was the barest hesitation in the boy’s manner as he looked up at his father, but when Nathaniel smiled and bent to pick him up, he put his arms tightly around his neck and hugged him with a silent wealth of emotion that filled Nathaniel with a warm, deep joy.

  “Lord Praed, I really do apologize.” Mr. Jeffrys’s accents, both obsequious and outraged, broke into the reunion. “Jake had no right to leave the schoolroom in such a discourteous and impetuous fashion. I will deal with him at once. Come here, young man.” He moved purposefully, obviously prepared to wrest his pupil from Nathaniel’s arms.

  “Are you still around, Mr. Jeffrys?” Gabrielle turned to look at him, her lip curled in disdain. “You really are the most odious toad. I suggest you pack your bags and leave as soon as you can do so. Lord Praed will give you a month’s wages in lieu of notice and the gig will drive you into Winchester, where you can catch the stage to take you back from whence you came.”

  She brushed her hands together with an air of great satisfaction.

  Mr. Jeffrys’s mouth opened and shut, and he looked just like the big old carp in the fish pond, Jake thought delightedly, unable to believe what he’d just heard.

  “My lord?” Jeffrys turned in appeal to Nathaniel. “I don’t know what to say—”

  “We’ll discuss it later, Jeffrys,” Nathaniel said calmly, setting Jake on his feet. “You may be sure there’ll be a generous settlement.”

  The tutor clutched the lapels of his gown in a convulsive grip as if trying to hang on to some symbol of his authority, then he turned and went back into the house.

  Jake gave a gleeful shriek. “You sent him away, Gabby! Gabby sent old Jeffrys away!”

  Gabrielle grinned down at him. “Mothers can be remarkably useful on occasion.”

  Jake blinked and then said in an awestruck voice, “You going to be my mother?”

  “Would you like that?” She came down to his level, catching his chin in her hand.

  Jake just gazed at her, speechless. Then he gave a loud whoop of joy and dashed away, racing round and around the gravel sweep, his arms flapping wildly in a violent imitation of a massive bird.

  Georgie, who’d just alighted from the second chaise, regarded Jake’s exuberance with a tolerant eye. “He seems to like the idea,” she observed.

  “Did you just give that tutor his walking papers, Gabby?” Simon was looking half shocked, half amused.

  “Odious toad, she called him,” Miles said with a grin. “Mind you, he did seem to be singularly lacking in attraction, even for a tutor.”

  “I suppose it was too much to expect you to wait for the ink to dry on the marriage license before you started throwing your weight around,” Nathaniel remarked with a degree of resignation.

  “When it comes to Jeffrys, yes,” she responded firmly.

  Nathaniel shook his head with a half-smile and called to his son, still tearing around the circle loudly whooping.

  “Jake! Jake, come here now and greet our guests in proper fashion.”

  Jake turned and came swooping toward them, flapping his wings. His father reached out and collared him, hauling him to a standstill.

  “You remember Lord and Lady Vanbrugh, don’t you?”

  Jake nodded, too out of breath to speak. His face was scarlet with his exertions and his hair stuck damply to his forehead.

  “Make your bow,” Nathaniel prompted.

  Panting, Jake obeyed, jerkily sticking out his damp hand. Taking a gasping breath, he asked Gabrielle, “Are you married to Papa now?”

  “Almost,” she said, wiping his face with her handkerchief. “That’s why Georgie and Simon and Miles are here. We’re going to be married in the church tomorrow.”

  “Can I watch?”

  “Of course. That’s why we came here,” she said, taking his hand. “Shall we go and tell Primmy that Mr. Jeffrys is going?”

  Miles watched them walk off hand in hand, Jake’s bubbling voice continuing almost without pause for breath. “It’s funny, but I’d never have thought of Gabby as a mother,” he said. “She seems too exotic, somehow.”

  “Oh, that’s nonsense,” Georgie declared. “Gabby’s wonderful with children. You should see her with my baby brothers and sisters. And little Ned dotes on her.”

  “Shall we go inside?” Nathaniel said abruptly, his countenance suddenly dark. He strode ahead of them into the house.

  Simon and Miles exchanged a rueful look. “Did I say something wrong?” Georgie murmured, slipping her arm through her husband’s.

  “No,” Simon reassured. “He’s just a bit sensitive on the subject of children because of Helen.”

  “But that was seven years ago!”

  “He’ll get over it. Gabby’ll make sure of that,” Miles said with confidence as they entered the house.

  Gabrielle came running down the stairs as they went into the library. “Oh, there you all are. Georgie, come and help me choose my wedding dress. Elite’s unpacking my things and I can’t decide whether to wear flaming crimson, since I am a scarlet woman about to be made an honest one, or some niminy-piminy sprigged muslin.”

  “You don’t have any sprigged muslin,” Nathaniel said, pouring wine for his guests, his expression once more equable. “At least, not that I’ve seen.”

  “I suppose I could wear my britches, like I did when the Danish captain married us.”

  “What Danish captain?” Simon asked, fascinated.

  “Oh, on a boat to Copenhagen. Nathaniel asked him to marry us and he did his best, poor fellow, but I don’t think he knew what he was doing, so we decided we’d better do it again, properly. Just to be on the safe side. We don’t want any little ones born on the wrong side of the blanket, do we?”

  “Gabby!” Georgie exclaimed, for once shocked.

  Gabrielle just laughed. She glanced at Nathaniel, expecting to see amusement on his face, and suffered a shock. His face had closed, his mouth tightened, his eyes flattened. He looked at his most intimidating.

  “I don’t find that amusing,” he said in cutting accents.

  “Why not?” Gabrielle perched on the arm of the sofa. “Maybe it wasn’t a piece of scintillating wit, but it wasn’t that awful.”

  “It was tasteless and unfunny. Do you want a glass of wine?”

  “Not if you’re going to be such a stuffy scold.” She stood up. “Come to my room, Georgie, and help me go through my wardrobe.”

  Georg
ie left the men in the library with a degree of relief. Nathaniel was looking thunderous and the other two embarrassed.

  “I haven’t seen Nathaniel look so ominous in ages,” she said in the privacy of Gabrieile’s apartments.

  “He doesn’t like talking about children,” Gabrielle said. “He feels that Helen’s death was caused by his own thoughtlessness. I suspect he’s not going to want any more.”

  “Oh.” Georgie frowned. “But what about you? Do you want children?”

  “Yes,” Gabrielle said. “I want lots of them.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’m hoping that once he gets used to being married again, he’ll stop worrying about it and it’ll just happen naturally.”

  “But what if it doesn’t?”

  Gabrielle shrugged. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” She flung open the wardrobe, where Ellie had hung her gowns. “Now, what’s it to be? I suppose I really can’t wear black, not to my own wedding.”

  “No, of course you can’t,” Georgie said indignantly. “Not even you could do something that outrageous.” She riffled through the dresses. “What about this?”

  Gabrielle put her head on one side, frowning at the gown of lilac crepe. “No, I don’t think so. There’s an ivory silk in there with black velvet ribbon knots on the sleeves …. Oh, it’s you, Nathaniel.” She turned at the sound of the door opening. “Do you think I can wear a dress with black velvet ribbon?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to have an opinion when it comes to your wardrobe,” he said, his tone constrained, his eyes still frowning. “I wanted to consult you about Jeffrys, but I see you’re busy.”

  “I’m just going,” Georgie said hastily. “I have to decide what I’m going to wear to this wedding.”

  “I believe Mrs. Bailey has had your luggage taken to the red suite,” Nathaniel said with some of the stiffness of the old days, holding the door for her.

  “Thank you.” Georgie whisked herself into the corridor, wondering again just what it was her cousin saw in Nathaniel Praed. Sometimes he could be quite approachable, but usually he was downright intimidating.