“I saw that you were gone and I was worried.” He knew she did not want his concern, yet he could not help but tell her. “Miranda saw you. She saw you meet someone. And afterward you came this way with…with something in your arms.”
“Miranda sees too much that does not concern her. And she says too much. So does Milo. They should keep their eyes and their minds on their spells. I have already told you I agreed to do what I was asked to do. Now it is done. Enough of this talk.”
Guido shook his head. If only she would let him care for her.
In the cover of the hedge, they crouched, side by side, and looked up at the fantastic, soaring pattern of white stone towers and turrets that was Franchot Castle.
“I cannot believe you found a way inside that fearsome place and that you did not get lost,” Guido said, thinking of the hundreds of rooms and passageways and staircases and halls that made up the great building on its hill above the sea. “It is a miracle you were not noticed. Why would this friend of yours ask you to do such a thing?”
A whimper came from the bundle and Rachel raised the child to her shoulder. “I said nothing about a friend,” she told him. “I said I knew her and that she wanted me to perform a service for her. She has already paid me well for this. I have more gold than we could gather in a year of passing our cup at the fairs.”
“The fairs are good to us,” he grumbled.
“We travel from town to town. We have no home and we are scorned by all who look upon us.”
“People are glad when we come.” This argument was not new. “Each year they await us. We make them happy and we are happy enough ourselves.”
She gave a short, harsh laugh. “You are happy. You are not the one around whose body the snakes curl. You are not stared at by men who do not come to see the snakes.”
He felt peevish. “I am the snake man. You are my assistant. When you came to me, you were glad enough for a place where you could be safe from that creature who used you.”
“I am not safe,” she muttered. “I will never be safe.”
He wished he could calm her, please her, but there was no pleasing Rachel, and she wanted nothing from him but the meager security he could offer. She did not want what he so desperately longed to give her—his love.
“Come,” he said, his throat tight from breathing too hard and his heart still pounding from terror. “Soon the child will be missed and all at the castle will be alerted. They will come for us, and the first place they will look is the camp. What shall we do? I should have stopped you.”
“You could not have stopped me, because you did not know what I intended to do—and they will not come. They will never know what I have done, I tell you.”
Turning their backs on the castle, they continued on, stooping low. The baby cried now, softly but steadily, and Rachel made clucking sounds.
“I ask you again,” Guido said. “Why did the woman ask you to do this?”
“I told you, as a service and she paid me.”
“You anger me with your deliberate foolishness, Rachel. The woman wanted the child taken from its mother. For what reason?”
“The child’s mother is dead now,” she reminded him. “And I cannot answer your question, because I do not know. Anyway, it is of no interest to me. We should go by separate ways now. It will be best for me to enter the camp alone and from a different direction than expected.”
He coughed. The moist air of Cornwall always tightened his lungs. “You will not be able to hide the child from the others.”
“I know.” She looked anxiously about. “Please leave me.”
“What will you say? What if they guess who he is?”
“He is nobody now,” she hissed. “He is nothing, just like us.”
“He is a—”
“Hold your tongue! And leave everything to me. We will have money to buy a better horse now—and perhaps new shoes for ourselves.”
“The child will need—”
“The child will need nothing.” Her voice had lost its life.
He grasped her arm and pulled her close. “Babies grow. Soon he must be clothed, and he will also eat. The more he grows, the more he will eat.”
“He will not,” she declared, her black eyes burning into his.
A coldness curled inside the man’s belly. “Boys have large appetites.”
“Yes, but we shall not be concerned with such matters. I was paid well, my friend. Very well.”
A small flare of hope warmed him. “I suppose that is why the parcel the woman gave you was large—because it contained so much gold. It must have been heavy. Quickly, take me to the place where you hid the gold. We must get away from here.”
“The parcel did not contain gold. It held a child. An infant boy.”
He rubbed a hand over his eyes and made himself concentrate. “You took the child into the castle? Then you brought him out again?”
Hunched over, Rachel began to walk once more. “I took a child in. I brought a child out.”
The meaning of her words became clear, and his heart turned in his breast. “You are mad, truly mad, if you think they will not notice the difference.”
“They will not.” She laughed shortly. “They are people who pay strangers to care for their babies. Those strangers—if they should notice something amiss—will never admit that they allowed their charge to be stolen and replaced with another infant.”
Guido took a shallow, difficult breath and said, “And now you are to pass this child along to someone else? Someone else who will worry about food for a growing boy? You were paid a great deal for a task soon to be over.”
“No. And yes. The task will soon be over. I was paid a great deal because I am to ensure that the child disappears.” She splayed the long fingers of one hand over the writhing baby. “The woman said to be certain the body is never found.”
Charmed One
London, 1823
“His Grace the Duke of Franchot,” the footman announced nasally from the entrance to the packed music room.
“He is here,” Calum Innes said, so softly that only the man to whom he spoke could hear him. His next breath seemed the most difficult he’d ever taken. “His Grace the Duke. The man who is living my life.”
“Ah,” Struan, Viscount Hunsingore, murmured thoughtfully. He draped a heavy arm around Calum’s shoulders and said, very low, “Shall you want that life back, d’you suppose?”
Calum regarded the strapping blond man who strode through the parting crowd in the blue-velvet-and-gilt room at Chandos House. “That remains to be seen,” he said, although until this instant he had been almost certain his only interest was in observing in the flesh just once—the man who had taken his place when they were both infants. “He is a prancing ass,” he added, none too softly.
Struan chuckled. He flipped the backs of his fingers across Calum’s chest as if brushing some minuscule annoyance from the perfectly fitted black evening coat. “Have a care,” he said for Calum’s ear only. “The man is known to be dangerous, and you cannot be certain you are right about this so-called discovery of yours.”
“I am certain.”
“You have no proof.”
Calum raised his chin. “I shall get it. Look at him. He goes directly to the prince, as if his arrival must be the only one awaited.”
“Esterhazy seems not to mind,” Struan commented, studying the jewel-bedecked Austrian ambassador. “I’d say this isn’t their first meeting. No doubt they’ve a deal in common—great men together, hmm?”
“I fail to see any humor here,” Calum said, stiffening his back. “The man’s a strutting cockerel and I hate him.”
“You want to hate him,” Struan amended. “But I doubt you want to hate the lovely Lady Philipa. Such abundance, hmm? Abundant hair, abundant eyes, abundant lips. Abundant white flesh. Ah, yes, such flesh. Breasts such as those might be more than most men could…handle?”
“For an ex-priest, you are remarkably free with your assessments of
the female form.”
“Ex-priest. Yes, indeed, ex. Let us not forget that I was a priest for a short time and that I ceased to be a priest some time ago.” Struan’s dark eyes glittered with laughter. “I acknowledged my fleshly weaknesses. When will you confront yours, my friend?”
Calum deliberately looked away from the viscount’s clever, handsome face and concentrated instead upon the man known as the Duke of Franchot—and the voluptuous blond woman who clung to his arm. “Popinjay,” he said of the duke.
“Come, now,” Struan said. “Do not evade what may be the more important question here. What think you of his fair fiancée?”
“Garish,” Calum remarked shortly. “Too free with the paint pots.” But he continued to study the woman. He’d like to say she was nothing to him. That would be a lie.
“That may well be,” Struan agreed. “Yet a man’s bed would be the warmer for her presence there. And if her thighs are as white and round as her breasts, well, one can imagine the delights a man’s ship might find in such a harbor.”
“I liked you better as a priest,” Calum said curtly, but he felt the quickening between his own legs nonetheless.
Franchot spoke with Prince Esterhazy as the equal he clearly considered himself to be. Whilst he spoke, he looked around, inclining his head at men whose eyes he caught, and assessing women with insolent openness.
The orchestra burst forth afresh and dancers surged to the floor, their shimmering finery vying for supremacy. Plumes swayed and jewel-studded turbans winked. Silks and satins and sumptuous brocades swirled together. For each splendidly adorned female, a richly dressed gentleman, frequently noble, directed the progress.
“Now you have seen him,” Struan said, staring straight ahead, “no doubt we may leave?”
“Not quite,” Calum said, still studying the object of his interest. “She clearly adores him. But he is not attentive to her.”
“He behaves like a man who has tasted the fruit and knows he may continue to sample at will.”
Calum frowned.
“Ah, yes,” Struan said. “That troubles you, doesn’t it? You are thinking that the man has taken something else that should have been yours.”
Calum could not bring himself to answer.
“Odd,” Struan said. “I’d have expected a man like Franchot to choose a more elegant female as his duchess. One with a more subtle grace.”
“She has no grace at all,” Calum replied darkly. “And he did not choose her.”
“No, no, of course not. What am I thinking of? The betrothal took place at the time of Lady Philipa’s birth. And she comes with a huge dowry, I’m told.”
“Absolutely huge, my dear fellow,” said a man who stood nearby. A mincing creature corseted into a ridiculous pigeon-breasted silhouette, he turned his powdered and rouged face upon Struan. “Have we met? I am Wokingham. I’m sure I remember you from somewhere or other.”
“Hunsingore,” Struan said, unsmiling. “I doubt if we’ve met. Kirkcaldy is our seat.”
“Scotland!” the man said, pursing red lips. “You must be Stonehaven’s boy.”
“Stonehaven’s brother. My brother, Arran, succeeded. Our father died some years ago.”
“Ah, forgive me. Time rushes away from us. You were interested in Lady Philipa Chauncey?”
Struan cast Calum a brief, warning stare. “I was merely curious. After all, it is supposedly to be the event of the year—this marriage between two such old families.”
“More of an event for Franchot than for the girl, I fancy,” Wokingham said. “The world knows old Chauncey’s Cornish lands march with the Franchots’.”
“And that is of significance?” Calum asked, smelling a man who liked to show himself an authority on the prevailing on-dit.
“Significance!” Wokingham thrust forward a hip and guffawed. “I thought everyone knew.”
Calum restrained himself from saying that he was no one and said instead, “Refresh my memory.”
“Franchot needs the port to get all that lovely tin of his out of Cornwall in a timely fashion, don’t y’know.” Wokingham feigned boredom at this point, but his little eyes glittered. “It’s on Chauncey’s land. All well and good when the Franchots were in the business of protectin’ the Chauncey estate from invaders. The Franchots got free passage overland and the freedom to come and go from the Chaunceys’ port as they pleased. Not much call for protection from invaders anymore. That could change the nature of things, don’t y’know. But the present duke’s father had the wit to suspect he’d best make sure his path to an easy port didn’t pass into greedy hands—greedy hands that owed him nothing.”
Calum waited for Wokingham to continue and, when he didn’t, said, “You mean Lady Philipa’s father made all of his lands her dowry?”
Wokingham staggered under a fresh gale of mirth. “Strike me, no, m’boy! Chauncey’s not about to let go of his Yorkshire holdings. But the Cornish parcel goes with the girl, and that means it goes to Franchot on the day he marries her. He’d probably find a way out of the match—agreement or no agreement—if his future didn’t depend on that port.”
“The terms of the arrangement would not seem entirely onerous from his point of view,” Struan remarked. “She is certainly a memorable creature.”
Wokingham raised a brow. “You think so?”
“I do indeed.” Struan nodded toward Franchot and his companion. “There seems almost more of her than should be remembered by only one man, wouldn’t you say?”
Wokingham followed Struan’s gaze and smiled hugely. “You think that…Oh, no, m’boy, not at all. That isn’t the fiancée. She’s Lady Hoarville, don’t y’know. Old Hoarville’s widow. Should be a lesson to older gents who still like to poke a lush young piece. Did for him in short order, I can tell you.”
A flunky removed the potpourri warmer from the fire and held it aloft as he progressed through the guests. Musky sandalwood and the scent of roses wafted heavily on already too-pungent air. Calum began to feel too warm. The crush swayed together and voices soared in a shrill babel over the music.
Calum said, as much to himself as to Wokingham, “You’ll have us believe the…the duke attends a ball in the company of a woman to whom he is not engaged?”
“It’s the truth, m’boy. If you knew Franchot, you’d not be a whit surprised. His father had his wild moments, but there was never a doubt he was a gentleman with a scholar’s soul. This son is a rakehell to the bone. The Chauncey gel’s over there.”
Calum felt a coldness between his shoulder blades. He turned to survey the crowd behind him. “You mean,” he said slowly, “that Franchot’s fiancée is already here and he’s arrived with another woman?”
“I’d lay odds that those two are fresh out of her bed. Makes sense he’d feel obliged to bring her.”
Calum ignored that and asked, “Which is Lady Philipa?”
“Hmm.” Wokingham tapped a beringed finger against his slack lower lip. “Ah, yes, there she is, pretendin’ to be part of the statuary in that window alcove. Evidently Franchot’s grandmother—the dowager—is bringin’ the gel along. I see Her Grace sittin’ with Countess Ballard. Just to the right of the window. Lord Chauncey’s an explorer, when he’s not performin’ some sort of service for our Fat Friend’s lot. Widower. Love of his life—the wife—so the story goes. Wouldn’t think of marryin’ again. Just the one offspring. Another man would consider it his duty to produce a male heir, but not Chauncey. Happy enough to leave it all to the one female and Franchot.”
Calum was too engaged in searching for a lady trying to impersonate a statue to listen particularly closely to Wokingham’s diatribe. “Which particular window alcove?” he asked.
“Over there,” Wokingham said, pointing rudely. “Beige gown. Black hair. Absolutely forgettable—except for the diamonds. Chauncey supposedly gave the gel the family diamonds and told her to get some wear out of ‘em. Dashed strange fellow, Chauncey.
“Word has it the daughter’s been a
llowed to just about bring herself up. Now Chauncey’s not even in the country. Supposed to get back in time for the nuptials—not that I’d place any money on that.”
“We really ought to be getting along,” Struan put in.
The edginess in his friend’s voice was impossible to miss, but Calum ignored it anyway. “Beige dress,” he said, scrutinizing one female after another. “Black hair. Diamonds…Oh, my word, diamonds.”
“Wouldn’t miss those in a crowd, would you?” Wokingham remarked, looking down his immensely long nose. “No man would pass up a chance to put those pretty baubles into the family coffers. ‘Course, everyone knows Franchot’s coffers are already deep enough to drown in. But he needs Lady Philipa’s port. Not that there’s any danger of Franchot not getting the gel and the diamonds, I suppose. Disaster for him if there was.”
Calum heard what Wokingham said but found he’d lost interest in a flow of information that should concern him above anything else in life.
Lady Philipa Chauncey was tall and slim, possibly overslim. Her hair was, as Wokingham had said, black. Black and shining and drawn smoothly away from a sharply boned face that appeared entirely devoid of paint.
The diamonds in question formed an astonishing webbed collar with multiple points all but touching the modest neckline of the lady’s simply cut satin gown.
“Bit of a toadeater, what?” Wokingham said on a sigh. “Can hardly blame a fellow like Franchot for preferring La Hoarville, but dash it all—not quite the thing to flaunt it in front of the gel, eh?”
Calum set his teeth together and observed Lady Philipa narrowly.
Lady Philipa observed her fiancé and his companion.
“Looks dashed upset, if you ask me,” Wokingham said. “They say she’s a quiet little thing. Bookish, or some such nonsense. Keeps to herself. But you can tell she’s got eyes for the duke. Oh, yes, she’s all aflutter over him.”
“I wouldn’t have said so,” Struan commented from behind Calum. “I’d have said she was…well, what would you say Lady Philipa was, Calum?”
Fascination -and- Charmed Page 36