The anonymous Miss Addams

by Kasey Michaels

  Caroline was not mollified, as she was certain he did not want her to be. He was smooth. He had only agreed that he and André had not believed her, not that they had been wrong. He was never serious, but constantly flippant, and most incisively cutting. Well, she would not rise to his bait and give him the satisfaction of seeing her lose her temper. If he thought he could push her, she would show him she was capable of pushing back.

  “I am pleased to see you have finally decided to believe me,” she answered sweetly, just as if she had taken his words to heart, carefully removing her arm from his grasp and heading for her mount. “If your presence at this moment is a belated show of concern, I shall accept your apology.”

  “I didn’t offer one,” Pierre pointed out, making a cup of his joined hands and giving her a mounting step to help her into the saddle. “But, then, you already know that, don’t you? I merely listed a few Standish failings. Personally, I’m rather proud of them. And, you must admit, your own behavior begs another question. Would a prudent woman ride out alone if she was really convinced she was in danger?”

  He had her there, not that she would give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him. She looked down at him from atop Obtuse, knowing she was going to regret her next question. “If you don’t believe me about the man, then why did you say I was in danger in the first place? You make precious little sense, Mr. Standish.”

  “Call me Pierre, Caroline. I think we have outlived the need for such formalities. You’re riding my horse, for one thing, a horse that has known none but me on his back, surely a sign that you feel you know me well enough to make free with my possessions. Also, we should remember that we have seen each other in a state of undress. Yes, I would say the time for formalities has passed.”

  “Answer the question, Pierre,” Caroline gritted, wondering why she stood here listening to his nonsense, when it would be so easy, so very easy, to spur Obtuse into an instant gallop and leave the insufferable man in the dust. “You did think I was putting myself in danger by riding out alone because of the man I saw in the gardens. That’s why you came after me. Admit it.”

  “I could, I suppose, say that you may have unconsciously put yourself in some peril from some unknown gentleman set on doing you harm. I could say it, but I won’t, for I don’t believe it.”

  Caroline could have burst into tears. She was right. He still didn’t believe her! He was deliberately leading her on, making her think he was concerned for her safety—concerned for her. He didn’t care two sticks for her! It was his horse he had come after, and now he was just getting some of his own back, leading her on with all this talk about danger, because he felt she deserved punishment. “I could detest you with very little effort,” she said meanly, glaring down at him. “Very little effort.”

  Pierre placed a hand on his heart. “Please, Caroline, your vehemence threatens to crush me.” Before she could answer, or even think of something vile enough to say that would do justice to the way she felt at this obvious untruth, his hand moved, delivering a sharp slap to Obtuse’s flank, and she was fully occupied in controlling the stallion as it began to race back to the stables.

  Several minutes later, as the groom helped her from the saddle, Pierre rode into the yard on his slower mount, tipping his hat to her. “How could you have done that?” she yelled to him. “I could have been killed!”

  “As much as I dislike explaining myself, I shall answer you. If you weren’t a superior horsewoman I would have found you in the field an hour past, your obstinate little neck broken in several places,” Pierre answered as another groom raced to the horse’s head so that his master’s son could dismount. “I know your limits, Caroline, perhaps better than you do yourself. I suggest you reflect on that for the remainder of the afternoon.”

  “I detest you!” she said, flinging the words at his departing back, causing the groom, who was about to walk Obtuse in order to cool him, to shake his head in silent condemnation.

  “He’s arrogant, insufferable, and entirely too sure of himself. I really, really detest that man,” Caroline consoled herself repeatedly as she stalked back to the house, rhythmically slapping the riding crop against her thigh. Perhaps if she repeated the words often enough she could make herself believe them.

  “C’EST BON POUR LES CHIENS; it is good for the dogs, and nothing else. Mon Dieu, how could this have happened?” Duvall was inconsolable. His master’s best jacket was ruined past all repair, covered with horsehair and splashed with flecks of sticky, drying foam that had come from the mouth of the horse he had stretched to its limits during the search for that ungrateful Miss Addams. The valet held the offending jacket at arm’s length in front of him by the tips of two fingers, his expression eloquent with disgust.

  “First she arrives like a hair in the soup. That was the first sin, but not the last. We cannot escape from this terrible place to London because of her. The dirty little person is still with us because of her. But now, but now—this is the sideways of enough! Now she has caused for the so-beautiful jacket to be destroyed. I warn you, master, you won’t buy another like this for a mouthful of bread.”

  Pierre, who had been listening to this tirade, and much more, from his valet all during his bath and while he was dressing for dinner, took one last look at himself in the mirror over his dressing table and was tolerably pleased with what he saw reflected there. “Your concern for my finances warms my heart, Duvall, even as your ceaseless chatter fatigues me. Kindly dispose of the thing. The smell of horse goes badly with the scent I have chosen for this evening.”

  Duvall was past caring whether or not he was displeasing his employer. After all, hadn’t he, for two long hours only that morning, brushed this very coat into an absolute merveille of perfection? If his master had felt the need to go chasing after the so stupid English-woman, the least he could have done was think of his poor valet’s dedicated efforts and changed his jacket before leaving. Where was the man’s gratitude, his consideration? Duvall took one last, sorrowful look at the jacket, then dropped it out the open window onto the ground below, planning to fetch it later, in the hope he could at least rescue the silver buttons.

  “And it has all gone for nothingness anyway,” Duvall mused aloud. “She did not even have the decency to be killed. A fine jacket, ruined, and all for the wild geese chase. C’est incroyable!”

  “Your logic never ceases to amaze me, Duvall,” Pierre said, turning to his valet. “If Miss Addams had been murdered, then the sacrifice of my jacket would have been acceptable? Do you dislike women so much?”

  “Appeler un chat un chat; to call a cat a cat, I say,” Duvall responded reasonably. “A woman you can get anywhere, but a perfect jacket is not so easy to find.”

  Pierre’s smile disappeared. “For the most part, my rationalizing friend, I agree with you. However, I value this particular woman a bit more than that. Someone is trying to kill Miss Addams, or at least make off with her. She was lucky today, if it can be called lucky to have had Oakvale for company, but at least his unlooked-for presence served to keep her safe from whoever is after her.”

  Taking his cue from his master, Duvall pushed all remaining regrets concerning the demise of the jacket from his mind and concentrated on the matter at hand. “The man in the gardens is then real?”

  Pierre chose a ring from the tray on top of the dressing table and slipped it on the smallest finger of his left hand. “Someone did a good job of trampling down the shrubbery out there,” he told the valet as he held his hand in front of him, considering the appropriateness of his choice of gold-encircled onyx over the plain gold ring he usually wore with this particular ensemble. “Not that I would tell Miss Addams that, of course. I see no good reason to alarm her. Unless, of course, she persists in trying to slip her leash.” He turned to the valet, holding out his hand for that man’s opinion. “What do you think, Duvall? Too much?”

  Duvall, pleased that his employer had applied to him for guidance, immediately exploded into a torrent o
f complimentary French, extolling the man’s utter perfection. Monsieur’s frame was exquisite, honoring the very fabric of which his ensemble had been constructed. The cravat, it was how you say, a triumph! The hair, so full, so thick with health, fit his head like a crown to a king. And the shoes! The shoes were—

  “Fairly comfortable, thank you,” Pierre broke in, moving toward the door. “Thank you, Duvall, for that rousing declaration. If you are correct, Miss Addams will swoon at the sight of me. That only leaves me with the question of whether I should welcome such an occurrence—or do my best to avoid it.”

  Duvall opened his mouth to give his opinion, but his master had shut the door behind him before he could voice it.

  PIERRE STANDISH EXCELLED at polite yet interesting dinner table conversation, which was one of the many reasons he was welcomed everywhere in Mayfair, even if his hosts were never quite sure if their guest was laughing with them or at them.

  He was also considered to be quite a success with the ladies, although he never seemed to exert himself to gain their good opinion. It was just that he was so very handsome, and so strangely mysterious, his dark good looks and incisive mind compelling all the young belles, and more than a few of their mothers, to try to discover the key to his locked heart. His massive fortune only added to the sweetness of the pie.

  The masculine portion of society, whether they be titled lords, war heroes, or refined gentlemen of quality, were equally desirous of gaining Pierre’s regard, but for the most part they were more than a little in awe of the man. He did not give of himself, did not engage in polite conversation or welcome confidences as much as he seemed to use some strange sixth sense to ferret out the motives and shortcomings of his fellow man.

  While many prided themselves on being numbered among his acquaintance, and would have liked to know him better, only a few trusted friends were allowed into his inner circle. Partly this was due to Pierre’s upbringing, and a father who had taught him that a man should consider himself blessed if he could number his real, true friends on the fingers of one hand. The unfortunate affair of Quennel Quinton’s blackmail scheme had served to harden him, making him appear even more formidable than he was before serving in the Peninsula.

  The women could not know that Pierre had been harboring an unfavorable opinion of the inconstancy of a female’s affection, nor the men be aware that he had begun to look on all of mankind with a faintly jaundiced eye.

  Caroline Addams, not knowing that she had been treated to a greater degree of friendliness by Pierre than almost every other female in England—thanks in part to André’s admonition to find himself a redeeming charitable project—was also without knowledge of Pierre’s reputation. She only knew that he was extremely handsome, curiously reticent and maddeningly intriguing.

  Like many of her sex, she wished she could somehow peel away the world-weary façade Pierre wore and get to know something of the real man that lay beneath the polished exterior. She wanted to see him react, whether in anger or passion she did not know. He was so cool, so controlled, so very perfect. His perfection, she had found, was the most annoying thing about him, and she longed to see him ruffled, on edge, unsure of himself.

  “Human,” she said aloud, walking into the drawing room a few minutes before the dinner gong was due to be rung. “That’s what I want to see. Some sort of human emotion—and I don’t count that dratted eyebrow as a display of anything other than disdain. I want to see him with his feathers ruffled, off his stride. And I want to be the one who causes his dishevelment.”

  “You said something, miss?”

  Caroline whirled around, nearly tripping on the overly long hem of Eleanore Standish’s gown. “Oh, Hartley, you startled me! I didn’t see you over there. No, er, no, I didn’t say anything. Did you think I said something? Oh, dear, I must have been talking to myself. I do that sometimes, don’t you? Jeremy says it’s a bad sign, and I might end up part of the Sunday show in Bethlehem Hospital. That would be too bad, wouldn’t it?” She laughed weakly as the old retainer regarded her owlishly. “Yes, ahem, excuse me. I seem to be babbling. Did you want something, Hartley?”

  Hartley shook his head while still looking at her strangely, then bowed himself out of the room. “There!” Caroline groused, dropping heavily into a nearby chair. “That is a fine example of what I’m talking about! Hartley startled me, and I proceeded to make a cake of myself trying to explain what I was doing. Pierre, on the other hand, wouldn’t have been overset in the least. He probably would have turned, oh so slowly on his heels, lifted that dratted eyebrow of his just so”—she tilted her chin upward and tried her best to imitate Pierre’s haughty glance—“and said, ‘Ah, Hartley, you are here. How fortunate. If it would not be too great an exertion on your part, might I trouble you for a glass of port?’”

  “I make it a point never to drink port before a meal myself, Caroline, as it ruins the palate. But, as Hartley isn’t here, might I play the part of loyal servant and fetch you a small glass of sherry?”

  For the second time in as many minutes, Caroline found herself flying into nervous speech. “Pierre! I didn’t see you there. Well, of course I didn’t see you there, for you weren’t there, were you, or at least you weren’t there a moment ago. You are here now though, aren’t you? Oh, wasn’t that the dinner gong? My, I’m starving. An afternoon on horseback will do that to one, won’t it? Shall we go in? It wouldn’t do to have the meal cool, would it?” She hated herself for what she was doing, and longed to slap her hand over her mouth to stop the flow of words, but she couldn’t.

  Only Pierre’s left eyebrow, the one he was raising in that oh-so-sophisticated way, could put a bridle on her runaway tongue. That, and his next words: “Caroline, far be it from me to criticize, but you are babbling. Has Sir John’s company this afternoon so titillated you that you are reduced to the simplest of chattering females? It would be such a pity, for I had thought you above such failings.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she stood, intent on saying something so mean, so cutting, that he would flee the room in fear of her wrath. She glared at him while summoning something sufficiently nasty to say, her gaze raking him from his perfectly combed head to his brilliantly polished shoes. He looked, a part of her brain registered automatically, incredibly handsome in his ebony and white evening dress.

  “Why must you always be so damnably perfect?” she blurted without thinking of the consequences, suddenly feeling undersized and dowdy in her borrowed finery. “Perfect speech, perfect clothes, perfect control—nobody should be so damnably perfect. Listen to me—I’m swearing like some fishwife! Oh! You make me so angry!”

  Pierre didn’t so much as blink, a lack of reaction that made Caroline mentally strike another black mark against him in the copybook she had begun keeping in her brain. “Well? Aren’t you going to say something?”

  She watched as Pierre walked toward her, holding out his arm so that she might take it and together they could proceed to the dinner table. “What would you like me to say, Caroline? You are obviously overwrought, and you are correct—it is entirely my fault. This perfection you speak of is my personal curse, but I did not mean to inflict it on you. Perhaps if I were to slurp during the soup course? Or would you rather I ate my peas with a knife? I should be willing to do anything to oblige you.”

  She stopped, tugging on his arm so that his progress was halted as well. Looking up at him consideringly, she gave in to impulse and raised a hand, deliberately mussing the front of his hair so that it hung over his forehead. “There,” she said, standing back to admire her handiwork. “That’s more like it. You look almost human, Pierre. Now I believe I can do justice to my dinner.”

  She took one step toward the dining room before Pierre’s hand snaked out to grab her arm and pull her back. Without a word, he hauled her into his arms and kissed her, hard and long and quite thoroughly. When he released her, she was breathing heavily, her cheeks flushed a becoming pink and her lips softly swollen. “What—what did you do
that for?” Caroline squeaked when at last she could speak.

  Pierre studied his handiwork for a moment, gently running a fingertip across her slightly parted lips. “There,” he said, smiling. “Now I feel human, and I, too, can enjoy my dinner.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT WAS A LOVELY country village lined with small thatched cottages, a pond at its center, and boasting not two but three perfectly wonderful little shops whose window displays captured Caroline’s interest. So far she had purchased a wide yellow satin ribbon for her hair, a snow-white linen handkerchief with a delicate pink and green embroidered hem, a pair of tan leather riding gloves, and an ample supply of sugary hard candies, which she and her maid, Susan, were already sharing.

  She disliked the idea that she had been reduced to spending Pierre Standish’s money, but she was totally without funds of her own. She had fought and conquered her misgivings, knowing that, while there were a myriad of things she could continue to either borrow from Eleanore Standish’s wardrobe or do without, there were also certain things she desperately needed.

  The most important thing, the primary reason she had come to the village, was to purchase shoes that fit her. She was tired of retracing her steps to retrieve Eleanore’s too-big slippers that kept falling off her feet. Of course, this didn’t explain the purchases already lying in the basket Susan was carrying, but Caroline wasn’t going to think about them now. She was just going to enjoy herself. She deserved it. She had earned every last copper penny of the money, too—having to endure Pierre Standish’s insulting embrace.

  Even now, the morning after her disgrace, her cheeks burned with embarrassment and indignation. And something more, something that she would rather not think about. For Caroline knew that most of her discomfort derived from the fact that she had enjoyed his kiss and had not fought to free herself from his arms.