She pulled on his arm and led him into her room, where he helped her lift the portmanteau onto the edge of the bed. “It came to me during dinner,” she explained, “that if one wanted to hide something thin and pliable, one could sew it into a garment.” She then proceeded, as coherently as she was able, to explain why she was certain the pink shawl had been the hiding-place.
He heard her out in silence, and since his face gave away nothing of his thoughts, she was prompted to ask, with a flicker of hope, “But did you chance to go through the articles of clothing to discover whether anything was hidden within them?”
“No, I did not,” he said slowly. “Since I believed, at first, that I was after something more substantial than a few pieces of paper, I made no more than a cursory search to see if some article of clothing was perhaps being used to wrap what I was looking for.”
Helen was of the opinion that it was a woman’s trick to sew things into garments. “Such a thing could not have occurred to you.”
“Why not?” he queried.
“Because you are not female,” she answered, surprised at his obtuseness.
“An inarguable statement!” he replied with the shadow of a laugh. “The idea did, however, occur to Vincenzo.”
“But that is because he has had much practice! It took me the whole day to think of it, and I had the advantage of having recently seen something similar done, inadvertently, at Mrs. Hemmings’s.” She clutched at a last straw. “Or do you think that we are jumping to conclusions and that we have simply misplaced the shawl?”
“No, I feel certain that you are right. It is gone,” he said, resigned but calm.
Despite his composure, she sought to console him. “You could not have known that Vincenzo had or how he had hidden it! You cannot blame yourself, sir!”
“I don’t.”
She found his eyes resting on her. She was not aware of the oddly arrested look in them, just as she was unaware of her own attractiveness. She knew only a guilty agitation. “I know!” she lamented. “It is all my fault!”
He nodded slowly, a half smile curving his mouth at this admission. However, he seemed to have lost interest in Vincenzo and the pink shawl, for the smile flickered in his eyes, warming their grey depths. She suddenly felt breathless and a little dizzy and had a notion that he intended to kiss her. She, too, forgot about their loss and offered no resistance when he placed his hands lightly on her shoulders. She looked up at him very willingly, blushing a little. She saw the smile fade from his eyes and the light of desire take its place.
Then he put his lips on hers and kissed her, very gently at first. She could not help but respond to this comfort, to this subtle promise of passion, to this invitation to risk. When his hands slid from her shoulders and down her back, pressing her against him, she met that risk and took a different sort of gamble. She raised her arms so that they came up around his neck, and kissed him in return, meeting the softness and gentleness of his lips with a softness and gentleness of her own.
He broke the light kiss and his lips grazed along her cheek to her ear. “Yes,” he breathed, “I would say that it is rather your fault.”
She tried to move away from him, but he held her firm in the light, unbreakable lace of his arms. “I’m sorry!” she said against his neck, sighing. With the sigh, her breasts pressed more firmly against his hard chest, causing fluttery sensations to rise within her, flitting from guilt at her loss of the shawl to the desire she felt in his arms, back to guilt at the desire she felt.
“I’m not,” he said, moving his lips back to hers.
The rumble in his voice stirred the fluttery feelings in her breast. Her heart turned over and wished to soar. The kiss became more insistent, and she was glad, but her desire to help him had not completely waned in the light of her desire to kiss him. She said, “You must be worried.”
“I’m not,” he said again, nibbling at her lips, kissing the corners of her mouth, her nose, her chin, his hands caressing her shoulders, moving lower… lower…
“But you should be,” she whispered weakly, all but losing the will to impress upon him the enormity of his loss.
She succeeded nevertheless. He drew back slightly, took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes. She saw the warm light in his own replaced by his customary pleasant but closed look. He was still holding her intimately, but he seemed about to make some light comment instead of kissing her again and coaxing her into unfolding her passion.
She felt devastated, bereft—and acutely embarrassed by her unrestrained response to him. The next moment, there came a knock on the door, and Mrs. Coats entered the room.
Mr. Darcy looked up. Without evincing the smallest sign of discomfiture that he should be found embracing his wife, he slid his arms up Helen’s back to her shoulders, then slid them down her arms again, taking her hands between his palms. Where he had touched her, a thin line of fire streaked across her senses.
His gesture was gracefully done and very affectionate. Mrs. Coats regarded them approvingly, but Helen looked doubtfully up at him, for it seemed to her that it had not been Mrs. Coats’s entrance which had made him refrain from indulging his desire, but some change in his own mind. “You should be worried,” she had said, and she supposed he was. She was inclined to believe as well that she had misconstrued his intention and that he had only been trying to console her with his gentle kiss. It did not occur to her that Mr. Darcy could have continued to kiss her the evening long, but that his fine sense of chivalry prevented him from taking further advantage of her, alone in his care and quite defenceless.
Mrs. Coats excused herself for intruding and addressed Helen. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Darcy! I just wanted to be sure you left the table because you are waiting for Mr. Darcy’s return, and not because something did not please you. As long as I am here, I may ask you, Mr. Darcy, when you would like to be served. The meal can be ready in five minutes. Less, if you’re sharp set!”
Although happy for the opportunity to compose herself, Helen was having difficulty concentrating on the question of dinner. She was about to decline any offer of food when Mr. Darcy’s long fingers closed over her wrist. Only then did he move slightly away from her to speak to Mrs. Coats.
“I am sure that the meal is perfect as usual, ma’am,” he said, clearing his voice of an uncustomary huskiness. “Oh, and Keithley has returned also and will need something in the kitchens.” He smiled down at his bride, causing her heart to turn over again. “We shall be down in five minutes, then,” he said. “I am excessively hungry!”
This seemed to please Mrs. Coats, who withdrew from the chamber with a warm and reassuring nod for the young couple.
Helen, however, experienced no feelings of reassurance. Instead, she had become mightily conscious of a doubt that had been growing in her heart for the last several days. She recalled telling Mr. Darcy that she was not much of a gambler, and resolved to take fewer risks where he was concerned in the future.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HELEN LOOKED SHYLY at Mr. Darcy, who said it would take him but a minute to arrange his tie and put on his coat. “I am sure the problem before us will have a more cheerful aspect once we have been fortified with food,” he continued easily.
She took her cue from Mr. Darcy and overcame her embarrassment. “You cannot mean to eat now,” she replied, quite amazed by his imperturbability but understanding that the kiss had affected her far more than it had affected him.
“I am very hungry, and I have no intention of forgoing my dinner.”
“But are you not going to go after Vincenzo?”
“Yes,” he said, “after I have finished my meal.”
“But that may take a long time!” she objected. “And will not Keithley mind going back out on the road so late?”
“I am sure that he will, so I beg you not to tell him of the theft yet, or he will plague me to be on our way after Vincenzo immediately! I assure you, I should be most uncomfortable careering about the countrysi
de without my dinner.”
“That is not what I meant!”
Mr. Darcy favoured her with a look of bland enquiry. “What did you mean, my dear?”
It was obvious to Helen that Mr. Darcy had turned provoking again. “I meant,” she said, rising to the fly, “that Keithley might object to dashing about in the dark of the night searching for an Italian actor and a pink shawl!”
“Not at all,” he said. “Keithley is quite as determined as I am to get at Vincenzo.”
“You hardly seem determined at the moment, sir!”
“I am quite determined to have my dinner,” he said. “Chasing someone on an empty stomach will not improve my chance of success.”
“But Vincenzo will be long gone by the time you set out!”
“That may be. But you see,” he explained patiently, “I have the advantage of knowing where Vincenzo is headed. To the west, I believe.”
Helen was quite put out by this time. “I do not see anything, sir! I was under the extremely uncomfortable impression that we had suffered a devastating loss!”
“Not a loss, merely a reversal,” he said. “The game is far from over.”
“I wonder,” Helen returned with admirable calm, “if you mean to explain how this can be. You might spare me further anxiety if I were somewhat less in the dark!”
Mr. Darcy’s smile softened into a look reminiscent of their recent intimacy. “You are quite right. I invite you to join me for dinner, and I shall provide you with the explanations that are due you.”
Seeing no profit in further protest, Helen capitulated, sinking into the nearest chair in the sitting-room. Mr. Darcy went to effect his evening toilette and returned to escort his bride to supper.
Mrs. Coats, who had decided that she would personally serve the meal, was already awaiting her favourite young couple in the parlour. This presented something of a bar to the appeasement of Helen’s curiosity, but she did her best not to betray any signs of impatience. In spite of herself, she was amused at Mr. Darcy’s recital of the hardships that had attended Lord Honeycutt’s eventually successful attempt to have his racing curricle repaired. Mrs. Coats found the account equally amusing, and since she invented every excuse to hover over them, she heard almost every detail that Helen did.
Not until the covers were removed and Mrs. Coats reluctantly retired once and for all to the kitchens did Helen turn to her companion and demand, “Now, sir, why have we been going to all of this trouble when you already know where Vincenzo was headed?”
“It is very simple, really.”
“Oh, is it? I cannot help but feel that my notion of simplicity and yours do not coincide.”
“To tell you the story in its most concise form, Vincenzo has papers I want.”
“That much,” Helen stated, “you have already told me. And you say they are not yours.”
“No, they are only of great value to me. I am persuaded that Vincenzo does not know why I want them. If he believes that I am after them for the same reason he is—for blackmail, as you have suggested—then he is at liberty to do so.”
“So you are not interested in blackmail?” Helen said, knowing what the answer would be, but still wanting to hear it.
“No.”
She was satisfied. “Do you think Vincenzo suspects that you know where he is going?”
“Again, no,” Mr. Darcy said. “Or, rather, I am betting heavily on the fact that Vincenzo does not know of my personal interest in the papers. Thus, he can have no reason to suspect that I know where he is going. He knows, of course, that I never discovered the hiding-place of the papers. Since I was not able to read them, he may assume that I do not know their contents or who is involved. He is probably remembering, with regret, that he rashly mentioned in Venice his possession of some valuable papers. He may believe that I heard of this and I have come after him to cash in on his good fortune.”
Helen had already ascertained that Mr. Darcy’s interest in the papers was not monetary. The only things she could think of that would be so valuable to a man were his name and reputation. She now pieced together the only story that seemed to fit the facts brought to light by Lord Honeycutt’s visit. Mr. Darcy had said that Vincenzo carried evidence of a theft. It must have been that Mr. Darcy had been accused and convicted of that crime. Moreover, it must have been a particularly heinous crime, else an obviously well-born man would not have been put in prison. In any case, his former acquaintance must have assumed that he had been incarcerated all these years and was understandably reluctant to say so. Mr. Darcy, however, had escaped, gone to the Continent, and established a new identity. Then he had discovered that Vincenzo carried something—apparently papers—bearing the name of the real thief. If Mr. Darcy could obtain these papers, he could clear his name and re-establish residence in England.
Helen longed to test her theory on Mr. Darcy, but refrained. “I fail to see how my presence has been necessary to your quest. You seem to be in possession of enough information to have done very well without me.”
“How can you say so, ma’am? Without you, I should never have discovered the hiding-place of the papers, or the fact that they were papers at all, since I had thought a diary had come into his hands. Now that I know what I’m after, I can relieve Vincenzo of part of his wardrobe, becoming though it may have been.”
Acknowledging the truth of this, Helen was somewhat mollified. Still, the adventure seemed to have taken some strange turns for no apparent reason. “You told me when we first met that you did not want to confront Vincenzo directly. Now you are forced into that position, and so it seems that you could have done so in the first place. In fact, it seems to me you could have confronted him in Venice and saved everyone a lot of trouble!”
“Back in Venice,” Mr. Darcy said, “I had only a suspicion about what Vincenzo was up to. It was here in England, when his trail led in this direction, that I became sure. Confronting him is not at all what I should have liked. I wanted to avoid… embarrassment for certain people and possibly even scandal. However, I have not been dealt the cards that would allow me to play my hand as I would wish. Keithley has uncovered some new information for me, and now I find that Vincenzo has become burdensome. I think he would do well to take a one-way journey to Italy, without the Zephyr shawl.”
Helen still had many unanswered questions, but remained silent.
Her state of mind must have been readable on her face, for Mr. Darcy said with an understanding smile, “I have been very unfair to you, I fear. I am confident that I shall be able to satisfy all of your questions tomorrow.”
“If you are so confident, then why do you not tell me now?”
Mr. Darcy smiled and looked enigmatic.
“I suppose,” she said, affecting an air of long-suffering patience, “that you will tell me that a gamester never lays down his hand until the game is over, and if he loses, he is not obliged to show his cards at all.”
“You are learning!” he said encouragingly, and pushed back his chair. “I must be off now.”
“Now?”
“You must make up your mind,” Mr. Darcy said placidly. “First you press me to pursue Vincenzo immediately, and now you wonder that I am leaving so soon after the meal. You cannot have it both ways, my dear!”
A retort bubbled onto Helen’s tongue, but she bit it back. “By no means do I intend to stand in your way,” she said cordially.
“Good,” he replied. “I can leave contented that I have your approval.”
“Much you care, sir!”
He merely laughed and rose from his chair. “We shall continue this discussion on the morrow, when I return. Perhaps we shall have other things to discuss then, too. Things of equal interest to us both.”
The words, uttered in his customary matter-of-fact style, held no particular meaning for Helen. Mr. Darcy went to command Keithley to action and to fetch his travelling coat. Helen met him some minutes later in the front hall to wish him Godspeed. Mr. Coats happened to be there at the
time, and by way of explaining this nocturnal sortie, Mr. Darcy said that he had left his hat and cane at the wainwright’s shop in Queen’s Porsley. Although Mr. Coats had no recollection that Mr. Darcy had been wearing his hat or carrying his cane, the George’s host knew that people of Mr. Darcy’s class were given to queer starts and thought nothing of it.
Under Mr. Coats’s watchful eye, Mr. Darcy brought Helen’s fingers to his mouth to kiss them and, as if yielding to an impulse to please his audience, he bent down and brushed her lips with his in a most husbandly manner.
“I shall have to take better care of you upon my return, my dear!” he said, strolling out the door into the night.
****
HELEN TURNED AWAY, feeling an unsettled sensation that, however, was unexpectedly and entirely pleasant. By the time she regained her chambers, she had recovered enough from the effect of Mr. Darcy’s kiss to be suddenly and profoundly worried about the outcome of his mission. She did not think the recovery of the pink shawl would be as effortless as he had suggested. The more she considered the story she had concocted to explain Mr. Darcy’s interest in Vincenzo’s papers, the more she realized how important they were to her gamester, and the more she feared for his success. She did not like the prospect of being parted from Mr. Darcy for an unspecified length of time, but her solitude was not unprofitable. By the time she had tossed and turned and lain awake through the long watches of the night, she had come to some hard and unhappy conclusions.
She was an honest woman and did not hide from herself the reason why she felt sharp hope for Mr. Darcy’s success and sick fear of his failure. Nor did she turn her face from the fact that the end of their adventure together was drawing near. Yet recognizing the truth of the matter did not mean that she accepted it easily. She already anticipated the pang she would feel when she must be on her way again, alone.
****
THE NEXT MORNING, there was no sign of Mr. Darcy. At breakfast she affected an unconcern she did not feel. Mr. Coats was perfectly satisfied by Helen’s reassurance that her husband was extremely absent-minded and had probably spent the night retracing all his steps in Queen’s Porsley to find his hat and cane.
Julie Tetel Andresen Page 15