Gilding the Lady

by Nicole Byrd

  Trying not to show the raging frustration he felt, Gabriel drew a deep breath. “Have any of them ever acted as a receiving agent, or held a position in which they might have received and forwarded letters?”

  “Eh?” The landlord looked confused.

  Gabriel tried to explain. While he was speaking, he glanced outside the somewhat dusty panes of the front window and paused. A girl walked by along the grassy edge of the dirt street. She was dressed in modest but respectable garb, and as she looked over her shoulder to call to someone out of sight, something about her face sent a shiver of recognition through him.

  He jumped to his feet. “I believe I see someone I know.” Gabriel took long strides for the door.

  But when he plunged through the low doorway, he was frustrated to see no sign of the nicely dressed young lady—surely she was a lady? She had shown, even in his brief glimpse of her, not just a respectable appearance, but an indefinable something in her bearing that denoted an assurance of social class, even in this tiny hamlet.

  Gabriel walked past several houses, but the girl seemed to have vanished off the street as effectively as if he had dreamed her.

  He returned to the front of the tavern and retraced the young lady’s steps. She had come from this direction. Either she had come out of a private home, or—the only other possibility was a small shop.

  Gabriel opened the door and went inside. The shelves that lined the walls were crowded with an assortment of merchandise, from boxes of salt to bolts of muslin. A middle-aged man came up.

  “Can I ’elp you, sir?”

  “Was there a young lady just in here? Do you know her name or where she lives? I saw her on the street, and I—I think she may be someone I know,” Gabriel said.

  This man seemed much more like the usual taciturn Northerner who had hindered Gabriel’s search for days.

  “If you knew her, you wouldn’t need to ask her name or where she lives, would ye now?” he pointed out, his words slow and his logic infuriating.

  “Yes, but—”

  “We donna care to see our young ladies hassled by strange men, if you’ll pardon me for saying so,” the shopkeeper concluded, his expression stern.

  Gabriel bit back an angry retort, which would not help the situation, and bowed, instead. When he was back on the street, he muttered quiet curses on all tightlipped Northerners.

  But she was a lady! And perhaps he would not leave the area just yet, after all.

  Gabriel rented a tiny room above the taproom and spent the next few days combing the countryside. But although he spoke to numerous men laying claim to the name of Smith, he found no one who would admit to any knowledge of having at any time received letters for a mysterious man whose name Gabriel could not supply. It would have been easier to ask questions if he’d had more information to start with, Gabriel thought for the hundredth time. Nor did anyone open up to him when he tried to bring up the question of young, blue-eyed ladies of good birth. . . .

  He began to feel as demented as the sturdy countryfolk seemed to think him. He was searching for any wisp of a clue, and like the faint smoke of a dying fire, every hint of real information seemed to slip away whenever he came close enough to grasp it.

  He had sent a note to his wife letting her know where he was and how his search was progressing, or more accurately, not progressing, and he received an answering letter from Psyche shortly after.

  My darling, it read. I know how important this pursuit is to you, but I need you home for a few days. Then you can return to your search. I have offered to host Miss Fallon’s coming-out ball, and it will look very odd if the master of the house is not in attendance.

  His brow knitted, Gabriel read the rest of the letter, sighed, and penned a short answer, promising to be home in time for the festivities.

  He spent two more days searching, and then packed his saddlebags again and paid his bill. He had left the village behind and was making his way south along a back road when he heard a commotion coming from a short distance away. Hesitating, Gabriel glanced at the sun, which had cleared the top of the tallest tree. He had a long way to go today.

  But the voice was feminine and sounded as if its owner might be in some distress. He turned his horse and trotted down into a shallow vale, past several clumps of trees.

  The greenery had hid the young lady’s predicament. Until he was almost upon them, Gabriel could not make out her form. He heard only a running commentary of annoyed and sometimes slightly improper rebuke.

  “You are the most irascible, stubborn, hardheaded, stupid bloody animal in the entire kingdom. Get up, Lucifer, get up, do!”

  The beast she addressed was sitting on its haunches in a small bit of bog. At first startled glance, Gabriel thought it was a small horse, but when he looked closer, it appeared to be another type of equine.

  Gabriel bit back a chuckle. “Excuse me, do you need some help with your, um, donkey?”

  The young woman whirled.

  Gabriel no longer had any desire to laugh. It was the young woman he had glimpsed on the street! She wore an ancient riding habit, whose cut Psyche would have observed was many years out of date. Gabriel simply noted absently that it was heavily coated with mud. The young lady wiped a smudge of mud off her cheek and regarded him with distrust. When she spoke, she sounded educated, and her voice lacked the heavy accent of the villagers.

  “He is quite a good donkey, normally, but occasionally—” She paused.

  “And this is why you have named him Lucifer?” he suggested, his tone bland.

  Her eyes flashed—blue eyes the color of deep ocean waters—eyes such as Gabriel himself bore, and his sister Gemma . . .

  He drew a deep breath.

  “Perhaps I can be of assistance?” he suggested, keeping his voice under control with some effort.

  “It is kind of you, sir, but I’m not sure anyone can move Lucifer when he is in one of his sulky fits,” she explained, in an apparent burst of candor.

  “Then perhaps I can give you a ride home?”

  “Thank you, but no.” She looked at him with apparent return of her suspicions and pushed a tendril of dark hair back beneath her hat, adding yet another smudge of dirt to her face.

  “I cannot leave you stranded in the wilderness,” he pointed out.

  “Thank you, but my home is not far away, and I cannot just abandon him. He’s quite a useful beast, you know, especially when the horse is lame yet again—not that it’s his fault—the horse, I mean. My sister would insist on jumping him over the hedge, and he’s much too old for such antics.”

  “Nonetheless, I cannot just leave you here,” he repeated. “Are you sure you cannot budge him? Have you tried a touch of your riding crop?”

  She looked at him aghast. “I do not carry a crop, sir!”

  “I see. Then if I cut a short branch and just gave him a flick of the switch on his flank—I would inflict no serious harm, I promise you.”

  She shook her head, and he sighed.

  “In that case, I don’t suppose you have a carrot about your person?”

  She pursed her lips. “No, I fear I did not leave home with any vegetables in my pocket.”

  “I just wondered,” he pointed out. “With a recalcitrant donkey, it might be a wise habit to take up.”

  A bird called in the brush, and Gabriel tried to think. He not only wanted to help, but he had to find out this girl’s name before he departed, or she might disappear again into thin air—or the boggy heath.

  “Is there anything you know of which might tempt him?”

  She considered. “He’s quite fond of sugar lumps.”

  “Ah.” Gabriel shook his head. “If I had known, I would have been sure to bring some with me.”

  She was going to think him mad, too. But she regarded him quite kindly. “That is understandable. You had no reason to think that you would need them. One does not generally encounter errant donkeys—”

  “Or ladies,” he murmured, trying not to smile
.

  “—along the way. Are you married?” she suddenly demanded.

  “Yes,” he told her. “I am.”

  “Oh, good,” she said, explaining, “My sister always said that if I ever actually met an eligible gentleman, I would be in just such a scrape as you find me, and I would rue my unfortunate habits. So, as you are obviously a gentleman, I am most glad you are not eligible.”

  Gabriel nodded, not ready to point out that, married or not, he might be extremely ineligible as far as she was concerned. But he had to find out if they might be related, and as long as this confounded beast sat in the mud—

  But even as he thought it, the brush behind them rustled as an unseen rabbit or fox or other small animal ran past, startled by something outside their view. His horse snorted and tossed its head, and he tightened the reins without even thinking, keeping it under easy control. In front of him, the donkey suddenly brayed and clambered to its feet.

  Gabriel pulled on the reins and backed his own steed to avoid the flying dirt. The young lady was showered with bits of mud, but she said, “Oh, good boy, Lucifer!”

  Despite the animal’s muddy coat, and before Gabriel could offer his assistance, she managed to scramble back up into the small lady’s saddle on the donkey’s back. “Thank you for your concern, sir,” she told him. “But as you see, I shall be just fine now.”

  “As long as your mount does not decide to rest his haunches again,” Gabriel noted. “I shall see you safely home before I continue my journey.”

  No way in hell he was letting her out of his sight now, Gabriel thought, although he smiled pleasantly at her.

  “I suppose—I mean, that’s kind of you,” she said. Once more atop her somewhat unreliable mount, she seemed more assured. But then, she had never seemed really disturbed, only annoyed. So much for rescuing the damsel in distress. Gabriel could have laughed again, partly from pure excitement, but he maintained his composure and motioned for her to lead the way.

  She nudged the donkey’s side with her heel and guided it back up out of the slight vale and through the trees until they reached a narrow but recognizable country road, even smaller than the one Gabriel had been following.

  While they trotted along—the donkey could maintain a respectable speed, it turned out—Gabriel tried to make conversation, though it was awkward. He had to ride just behind her, and he was several feet above her.

  “Is your family an old one?”

  She looked back over her shoulders, her expression puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You seem quite at home in the countryside,” he tried to explain.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve lived here all my life,” she agreed.

  That told him very little.

  “I am from Kent, originally, though I also have a home in London,” he told her. “Do you ever get to London?”

  She didn’t answer. Whether she had not heard or was ignoring inquiries she thought too personal or impertinent, he didn’t know. Perhaps she thought he was flirting with her. And now she was turning into a drive that led half a mile or so up to a pleasant-looking if hardly opulent country home, the type that a local squire or gentleman farmer, not too flush in the pocket but not beggard, either, might inhabit.

  She pulled up her donkey for a moment. “I am quite safe now,” she pointed out, as if to a crotchety grandfather who made a habit of worrying over nothing. “And I thank you for your concern.”

  “You’re most welcome,” he told her. “Not that I was very helpful. Next time I will remember to bring along that sugar. May I ask whom I had the honor of escorting?”

  She hesitated, then appeared to see no harm in answering. “Miss Dapplewood, sir.”

  “Good day to you, Miss Dapplewood,” Gabriel said. And most incorrectly, he did not offer his own name, but turned his horse back toward the main road. “I hope we shall meet again.”

  Looking puzzled, she nodded.

  Gabriel rode until he was out of sight, then pulled up his horse and hesitated. He took a watch out of his coat pocket and groaned at the time. But he couldn’t leave, not just yet. . . . Nor did he have time to confront the man of the house . . . but he had to at least confirm his suspicions before he rode on to London and beyond.

  He tied his horse in a quiet thicket and then made his way on foot back to the house, circling the grounds and coming up at the side of the building. He slipped around a shed and a small henhouse, staying out of sight of anyone inside. At last he reached the house itself and could slide along the wall until he could see through the windows.

  One room was a small parlor, neatly if not richly furnished and presently unoccupied. The next—Gabriel found his breath catching in his throat.

  The next room was a small library or study. Books lined the cases on the wall, and a desk sat near the window. Behind the desk was a man, bending over the desktop with a quill in one hand and a pair of spectacles in the other as he peered at the papers in front of him. He was writing a letter or perhaps adding up a list of figures.

  But it was the face that Gabriel stared at, gazed at as if he were transfixed.

  It was Gabriel’s face.

  Older, yes, with slight wrinkles about the eyes, a touch of gray at the temples, but the same well-made and good-looking countenance that had stared back at him from looking glasses all his life. The face that had elicited many a lady’s smile, many a welcoming flick of the fan, and ensured him all too many easy conquests, before he had met Psyche, his soul mate, the keeper of his heart, and given up such meaningless encounters.

  His face—his father?

  It could be no other. He had a name at last: Mr. Dapplewood . . . A gentleman, by the look of it—Would Gabriel’s mother have loved any other? He had never expected the man to be a servant or a peasant. A gentleman, not rich, and apparently married, if he had other children besides the ones he had sired outside of wedlock and had never, could never have acknowledged.

  Gabriel felt his first rush of exultation fade, and a certain grimness replace it. He had so many questions, and this man could finally answer them.

  He wanted to pound on the door, go inside and shake the man by his throat until he answered them all. To have to leave now, when he had waited so long, searched so far and with such effort—

  But he was already late, and to embarrass Psyche by not appearing for the ball—no, he would not—could not be so unthinking, and anyhow, she would worry if he did not appear as he had promised.

  Gritting his teeth, Gabriel watched as the man lifted his head, as if in answer to some call from farther inside the house. As the man turned his face away, Gabriel eased back from the window and made his way around the outbuildings and to his horse. He untied the reins and sprang into the saddle. He walked his steed through the uneven countryside until he reached the road and then urged his horse to a faster pace.

  He had a long way to go, and not much time in which to cover the ground. But when the coming-out ball was over, Gabriel would be back.

  And then at last, he would uncover the secrets behind the biggest mystery of his life.

  The next day, Gemma accompanied Clarissa to the final fitting of the ball gown, and it was truly a dress to take one’s breath. When the skirt had been eased over her head and the bodice buttoned, Clarissa gazed at herself in the mirror.

  Who was this glittering vision? Surely not a former servant who had almost forgotten where she belonged, who for years had barely remembered her true name. Blinking in disbelief, the face in the looking glass stared back at her.

  “You look amazing,” Gemma told her. “As beautiful and elegant as any young lady could wish, and you look—it suits you, Clarissa, in truth, it is perfect.”

  The couturier agreed, and accepted their compliments on her skill with calm demeanor. “I always know best,” she said.

  Clarissa was too awed by the dress to have any desire to giggle at the woman’s assurance.

  After a few more moments of admiring the image in the glass, she took off
the gown and returned home to more mundane tasks. The days were flying by, and tomorrow, the dress packed carefully in tissue paper, they would drive down to Lady Gabriel’s estate. On Friday night there was a relatively quiet dinner for the early houseguests; on Saturday there would be shooting in the morning for the men, while the ladies prepared for the big event; then the ball Saturday night; and on Sunday there would be a concert by a noted pianist invited for the occasion and then the guests would begin their departures.

  Some guests would stay the weekend and many more would drive down on Saturday, Clarissa had been told. The acceptances were already pouring in; a pile of them sat on the desk in the study right now. Considerable curiosity about Gemma still lingered among the Ton. After all, Gemma herself had burst onto Society’s awareness not that long ago. In addition, Lord and Lady Gabriel were both very much sought-after. As a result, almost no one they had invited was declining the invitation to either the ball or the whole weekend. The house would be packed!

  Trying not to think about a crowded ballroom with all the guests’ staring eyes turned toward her, Clarissa directed Matty as they packed up her new dresses—she had to have more than just the ball gown, of course—put her pearls into a small jewelry case, which her lady’s maid would carry, and tried not to think about the nervous shivers inside her stomach. Then, somehow, they were being handed into the carriage, their cases lashed to the back. Matthew, who usually rode but was still forced to nurse his wound, joined them in the chaise. Another carriage had been hired to hold the accompanying servants, and she and Gemma and Matthew rode at ease as their chaise headed out of town.

  What a short time it had been since she had been returned to her family, Clarissa thought as the streets of London slid past the windows of the chaise. Only a few weeks, yet in some ways, an eternity. Despite all her doubts, she had been more or less transformed from a rebellious serving girl to a young lady on the brink of her coming-out. She had met an earl, been accused of murder, gone into London’s most criminal neighborhood, and now she was going to a ball, her own personal ball.

  Surely, nothing would surprise her again. . . .