The biscuits were passed, along with a small crock of fresh creamed butter that was the private pride of the innkeeper of the Scarlet Cow, who would have blushed to the top of his bald pate if he could have heard this great praise. “Didn’t see me? Damn it! What does it take to convince you? We’ve been over this a dozen times. Then why did she set to screeching like a greased pig in a trap and go haring off back to the house as fast as her two legs could carry her? Answer me that if you can, you daft woman!”
“Your language, please. Don’t break my heart. But it doesn’t make sense. If she had seen you, the two of us would be before the local constable at this very moment, trying to explain our way out of the hangman’s noose. It wouldn’t have taken that frightening André Standish a full day and night to ferret us out, seeing as how we’re strangers, and staying at this inn not two miles distance from his front door. Why hasn’t she cried rope on us? Knowing her, I’m sure she would delight in seeing our necks stretched.”
“More to the point—why did she look at me so blankly and then ask me who I am? Anyone would think the chit didn’t recognize me. Either that, or she’s more of a cool fish than we thought and is running some rig of her own, to get revenge on us, as it were. Kindly leave one of those biscuits for me, if you please.”
“A rig of her own? Don’t be silly, she’s only a girl, and hasn’t the wit. No, it can’t be that. Perhaps she was just shocked by your sudden presence, and forgot your name for a moment.”
“Forgot my name? You named me Ursley, Mother, remember? Ursley! A person doesn’t forget a name like that. God knows I can’t. I couldn’t even be called by any other name than Ursley. Not Diccon, or Billy, or even Georgie. You cursed me when you gave me this name, and I shan’t ever forget it.”
“It is a family name, and very distinguished, or at least it was until your dearest father so carelessly botched our last endeavor—bless his dear, departed soul and may I be forever grateful that the poison I chose did not cause him to suffer unduly.” She buttered another biscuit. “I dislike seeing this pettish streak in you, Ursley. Have you been getting quite enough sleep these past few days? And, if you’ll remember, your classmates called you Stinker at school. Surely that qualifies as a pet name?”
Ursley ignored his mother’s casual mention of her murder of his father by way of a gooey strawberry tart laced with arsenic, for he saw nothing wrong in it, as the man had become an embarrassment to all of them. The only thing that worried him was that he himself was in danger of going down to defeat himself in their current project. It was a thought that could destroy a man’s appetite and make him overly anxious to succeed.
He took refuge from his thoughts in another attack. “If you had wished to help me compile a list of grievances against you, Mother, the name Stinker would come second on my list. First of course, is the problem of our little eavesdropper. And I still say she didn’t recognize me. I think she must have hit her head as she fell onto the roadway that first time I was chasing her, and can’t remember anything.”
Ursley’s mother thoroughly chewed the last biscuit and swallowed. “Yes, I have heard of strange things like that occurring after an injury to the head. I’ll agree that you have a point that bears investigation—though, of course, whether this new development will help or further complicate matters remains to be seen. Let me think on it until it’s time for luncheon. There must be some way we can be sure. Perhaps we shall not have to kill her after all. Having her insane and locked up snugly in some asylum would be equally as lovely as having her dead, and quite less the bother.”
“And live in constant terror that someday she’ll wake up screaming ‘That horrible man, Ursley Merrydell, and his wicked mother are trying to murder me?’ Oh, no, madam, I should think not!”
“No, no. I should think not, as well. But we’re going to have to be very careful. If only we could find some way to get ourselves into the Standish household. You know, that is a male household. It would be a shame if the girl’s reputation should suffer irreparable damage just because there is no good woman in the house to protect it, don’t you think, Ursley? I am a very good chaperone, thanks to your father’s unforgivable failure to leave us reasonably provided for, and have impeccable references. Go take a walk to settle your meal, dearest, while I think on this a bit longer, and we’ll talk again over luncheon. I wonder…”
CAROLINE HAD LAIN awake in her bed for half the night, racking her brain for some elusive memory, some forgotten fact, some small, enlightening clue that might serve to help her rediscover her identity. When the morning came she had nothing to show for her pains except slightly puffy eyes and a lingering headache. A headache that was about to become much worse.
She approached the sunny breakfast room warily—hoping to avoid bumping into Pierre, who would most certainly destroy her appetite with his unnerving presence—and succeeded in dining in solitary splendor. It was just as she was touching the fine white linen serviette to her lips one final time that the sound of a carriage moving off down the drive came to her ears.
Idly curious, and hoping against hope that Pierre had once more changed his mind and was already on his way to London—and out of her life—she drifted into the drawing room to see that same infuriating man standing at the mantel, dressed in his usual impeccable black and white, frowning over a missive he held in one hand.
“Bad news?” she ventured softly, hoping against hope that he had just learned his horses had all lost at the races and his cook had run off with the upstairs maid, taking all his silver plate with them. “You look faintly downpin, although I have found, with your usually unreadable expressions, it is difficult to tell just what is going on inside that head of yours—if, indeed, anything does.”
“Ah, Miss Addams. You’re awake, and as full of compliments as ever.” Pierre unhurriedly folded the letter he had been reading, pocketed it in his jacket, and turned to look at his father’s ward. She was coming more into her looks with each passing day, a thought that did little to change his opinion of her. Pretty is as pretty does, someone had once said, and Miss Caroline Addams had been remarkably unpretty in her treatment of him. Not that he cared one way or the other what her opinion of him was, he reminded himself with a slight mental jolt.
Her midnight hair was once more a cascading tumble of curls, reminding him of the way she had looked that first morning when Hartley had startled her from her slumbers and he had burst into her chamber, hairy legs and all. How could something so angelically beautiful, so fragilely constructed, so infinitely appealing, be such an unremitting pain in the—
“You will be devastated to hear the news, I imagine,” he said, bursting into speech before he could finish his last thought. “My dearest father has seen fit to desert us.”
“What! He couldn’t have! He wouldn’t have!” Caroline looked to the window, as if she could see the carriage that had recently pulled away and somehow call it back, then over to Pierre, her quick mind registering the fact that he appeared mildly pleased at her nearly hysterical reaction to his news. She cleared her throat, folding her hands together at her waist. “I see,” she said, striving to be calm. “A family emergency, no doubt? Perhaps he knew he could not stay under the same roof as you any longer without succumbing to the urge to strangle you?”
“Strangle me? My own father?” Pierre motioned to a nearby chair, politely inviting her to seat herself so that he could do the same.
“Yes,” she said, spreading her skirts around her as she chose a chair as far away from him as possible. “Don’t feign surprise. I imagine you inspire that sort of feeling in most of your acquaintances.”
“Don’t judge everyone else’s reactions by your own, Miss Addams. I am quite well thought of by many people, unbelievable as that might seem to you.”
“I’m not speaking of your paramours, Mr. Standish,” Caroline countered smoothly, then gave a silent gasp at the lengths to which her impudent tongue could take her when she was in his company.
Pie
rre smiled. Her looks improved even more when she was flustered. “We could sit here all morning, listening to you tear strips off my consequence, but I believe we have other matters to discuss. My father, by way of this letter he left before sneaking out of the house like some mischievous youth embarking on a spree, has charged me with your welfare while he travels to London on some trumped-up excuse about how he needs to personally choose a suitable chaperone for you. He is as transparent in his motives, I’m afraid, as a pane of freshly scrubbed window glass.”
“His motives?” Caroline asked, not liking the way Pierre was looking at her. He was entirely too familiar in his speech, and always had been, which was bad enough, but now he was looking at her in a way that made her wish she could throw her hand protectively across her breasts, hiding herself from his too observant eyes.
“Father would like it immensely if we were to tumble into love, Miss Addams,” Pierre said baldly, not seeing any reason to dress the thing up in fine linen. As a rule, he disliked being obvious, but his father was forcing his hand.
“With each other?” she squeaked, knowing her eyes were as wide as saucers.
“No, Miss Addams,” Pierre returned suavely. “I am to fall madly in love with the tweeny, that charming birdbrain servant who bursts into giggles each time I happen to pass her in the hallway, and you are to have your heart stolen away by my so-estimable man, Duvall. And here I have always prided myself on my lucidity. I thought I was being so clear. Please forgive me.”
Caroline was on her feet in a flash, wishing she was a man so that she could call this smug, maddening man out and then run him through. That alternative not being open to her, she walked purposefully across the room and leaned down to go eye to eye with him. “Don’t…be…facetious!” she said, punctuating each word with a sharp stab of her index finger against his pristine white shirtfront.
As she jabbed her finger the last time, Pierre lifted his right hand and neatly grabbed her wrist, pulling her down to within inches of his face. “Don’t…be…stupid,” he warned silkily, his black eyes flashing dangerously as his smile chilled her to the bone. He held her prisoner for another moment, an eternity during which she more than realized how vulnerable she was, before releasing her as-he had captured her.
She quickly retreated to her own chair, subsiding into it before her knees, curiously wobbly, buckled completely. “I—I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I’m not usually so forward.”
Pierre did not miss the implication of this last statement. Perhaps he had somehow, accidentally, jiggled her memory. “You’re not, Miss Addams? Tell me, please. How can you be so sure?”
A sudden vision of herself not more than a year younger than she was now, dressed in a rather low-cut white gown and laughing delightedly as she went down the dance with some scarlet-jacketed lieutenant flirting for all she was worth, flashed into her mind. “Oh, dear Lord,” she breathed, all color leaving her face as she pressed her hands to her cheeks. “You were right about me. I am a strumpet!”
Pierre folded his hands beneath his chin, much as his father had done the day before while Caroline told them about the intruder in the garden. “I must tell you, Miss Addams, my mind begins to boggle with your every new revelation. First you regale us with tales of bogeymen in the greenery, and now you confess to being a fallen woman. Tell me, are you an accomplished strumpet, do you suppose, or only a recent practitioner of the oldest profession? You barely seem old enough to have been plying your trade for any great length of time.”
Caroline closed her eyes, feeling slightly queasy, and the picture in her mind reappeared. She could see the entire ballroom now, and even make out one or two faces other than her own. It was a lovely ballroom, if slightly rustic, the sort of room to be found in a smaller city, although how she knew that she couldn’t remember, and the people looked to be highly respectable—even stuffy. A woman dressed all in purple, and with a most uncomplimentary silver turban banding her head, was regarding her in a clearly condemning way, as if she heartily disapproved of her conduct.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, scrunching up her entire face—bringing a genuine smile to Pierre’s face at the sight of her wrinkled-up nose—hoping for more, hoping to hear bits and pieces of conversation, for it would seem that she was talking to her dancing partner. The image visible inside her closed eyelids wavered slightly, distorting the disapproving, turbaned lady’s face most grotesquely, and then was gone, as quickly as it had come.
She opened her eyes. “I’m not a strumpet,” she said softly and to no one in particular, relief clearly evident in her voice. “I’m only distressingly forward, if the ugly purple lady is to be believed.”
“I can’t know how you feel on the subject, but for myself, I’ve never put much credence in ugly purple ladies,” Pierre supplied helpfully, rising leisurely to his feet. Crossing the room to the drinks cabinet, he poured Caroline a small glass of sherry and delivered it to her. “I shouldn’t like for this imbibing of spirits to become a habit, Miss Addams, but I think you could do with a small restorative. May I take it you’ve had a flash of memory?”
Caroline shook her head, declining the drink, then nodded. “I saw myself at a country ball, flirting most prodigiously with some lieutenant as we went down the dance, shocking the purple lady with my forwardness,” she told him, almost immediately regretting having shared the memory with him. “It was not really helpful, as I recognized nothing of the scene save my own grinning face. There wasn’t even any music. If only I could call the scene back again, and try to move it past that moment in the dance.”
She felt Pierre’s hand on her arm, and was startled by the gentleness his touch conveyed, a gentleness so in contrast with his usual condescending treatment of both her and her plight. “Don’t push, Miss Addams. There are ways and there are ways. Small, unexpected flashes of memory are only one of them. By one method or another your past will be revealed to you. In the meantime, as Cervantes said: ‘Patience, and shuffle the cards.’”
“‘There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.’ My goodness! Where did that come from?” Caroline exclaimed, amazed at the words from Cervantes’s Don Quixote that she had just quoted.
“My congratulations, Miss Addams,” Pierre murmured, looking down on her. “You become curiouser and curiouser. That you know Miguel de Cervantes’s work is surprise enough. Your choice of quote, however, is considerably more than mildly intriguing.”
Caroline brightened. “Yes. Yes, it is, isn’t it? What do you suppose it means?”
Pierre lightly stroked the scar on his cheekbone with the smallest finger of his left hand. “I believe it means that you have had a difficult morning and should indulge yourself in a small liedown in your chamber like a good child. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe my father’s defection leaves me with the sure-to-be fatiguing bother of having to discuss tonight’s menu with cook.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Caroline hopped to her feet, longing to stomp her foot in disgust, refraining only because Pierre was sure to comment on this display of immaturity and at last succeed in maddening her past the point of all rational thought.
Pierre turned back to her, his expression politely inquiring, “You want more?” he asked solicitously before producing a bored grimace. “Of course, how boorish of me. I seem to have temporarily mislaid my manners.” He bowed deeply, mockingly, from the waist. “Good morning to you, Miss Addams. As I will be lunching with father’s steward, I pray that, after you have sufficiently recovered in the privacy of your chamber, you will enjoy the remainder of your day until we meet again at dinner.”
Caroline watched, openmouthed and silently seething, until Pierre had sauntered from the drawing room, then headed straight to her chamber, exiting it not fifteen minutes later, clad in Eleanore Standish’s altered r
iding habit, the too-large boots clomping heavily against the stairs she took at a rapid pace. She didn’t know if she was a good horsewoman, or even if she had ever ridden in the first place, but she’d rather break her neck clearing a five-barred gate than bow to the autocratic Pierre Standish’s high-handed direction of her life!
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE WAS HALFWAY to the stables before realizing that the day was much too pretty to be spent thinking about either André Standish’s defection or the maddening Pierre Standish and his obvious wish to make her life as uncomfortable as possible. She would be happy today, if only to make him miserable!
Her furious pace immediately slackening to a leisurely stroll, Eleanore Standish’s intricately braided leather riding crop slapping softly against her skirts, Caroline took a deep breath of fresh country air into her lungs and looked about at the gloriously landscaped grounds that made up a small part of the vast Standish holdings. All at once her fingers began to tingle as she longed for her brushes, wishing to capture the scene with the watercolors from her paintbox.
“I paint!” she said out loud, halting in her tracks as the realization that she had discovered something else about herself penetrated her brain. “Ladies paint. Ladies, and the daughters of good houses. I dance, even if I do flirt. I dance, I paint, and I can quote Cervantes.” Her smile was as brilliant as the late morning sun. “I am a Somebody!”
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