by Vanessa Gray
Fortunately they arrived soon at the white double doors that marked the entrance to the English minister’s quarters. She had barely time to notice the rococo tables and chairs, in the style that more than ever reflected the Viennese tendency to decorate any surface, flat or rounded.
And coming toward her, smiling in welcome, was dear Rowland. He took both her hands in his and raised them one by one to his lips.
“My dear Elinor,” he said, “I had never expected to see you here. But your brother of course told us you were on your way. I have been impatient, I must confess, for your arrival.”
Strange, she thought, how one’s ideas are altered. Just a month ago, she would have swooned had Rowland smiled down at her in such a way. Only four weeks ago, she had seriously believed that she would swim the Channel to be by his side, to gaze again on the handsomest face in England.
She was exhausted — that was all, she told herself. She could not quite summon up the enthusiastic response he waited for.
“Rowland, we are not alone,” she said, glancing around her. “Can you bring me to Lord Castlereagh?”
The interview with Lord Castlereagh was short. A moment of explanation from Nell, a gracious word of thanks from the foreign minister, and it was over.
One month of peril, uncertainty, rough traveling, all for a moment’s transaction. She could not explain the importance of the parcel to the peace negotiations, for she did not herself know. She did not quite know what she expected, but she knew it was not this simple handing over, as though she had brought a soiled shirt to the laundress.
She left the humming hive of Castlereagh’s office, dissatisfied. She realized then that Rowland was beside her.
“Would you like some chocolate?” he asked. “Elinor, pray sit here. I should like a word or two with you.”
Here it comes! she thought. Rowland will offer, and I don’t know what I want.
In a moment a servant appeared with two small cups of chocolate, topped with whipped cream in the fashion that Phrynie recalled. They were in a large room, just outside Castlereagh’s white doors. Surely Rowland would not choose such a public place in which to renew his attentions! It would be as inappropriate as receiving intimate addresses in the British Museum!
Rowland, however, had no such intentions. Instead, when he broke into speech, his question was on an entirely different head. “I must admit, Elinor, that I am in a way confused. This parcel that you delivered to the minister?”
“Yes, Rowland? Pray do not ask me what it contains, for I do not know.”
“No, of course not. But it is the strangest thing. Your brother delivered a similar parcel — in fact, one might even suggest that it was identical — only three days since, when he first arrived.”
She felt as though she had been struck in the face. There were not two parcels. There could not be two parcels. And yet there were.
“Tom did?”
“I fear I have startled you. Believe me, it is not my intention to cause you the least distress, Elinor.”
“What was in Tom’s parcel?”
Rowland looked sharply at her. Her voice had altered and become taut as a fiddle string. He was not overly sensitive as a rule, but his diplomatic training had instructed him to listen for nuances, and to interpret them.
His interpretation of Nell’s demeanor was excessively unsettling to him. “I am not permitted to discuss the contents,” he said warily.
“Nonsense! You have come so far with it, Rowland, you cannot stop now. What was in the parcel that my brother brought?”
“Certain documents,” he said. “Of great value to our cause.”
“Precisely.”
If Tom had in truth taken the true parcel, then he had left her with a worthless package of whatever of an expendable nature might have been found at the inn. She scoured her memory to discover whether there was opportunity for him to make the substitution. There was indeed. He knew where she had hidden it, for she had told him. There was no reason why she should have secreted it away from him — and this was how he repaid her.
“I should not worry, Elinor,” resumed Rowland. “I shall take it on myself to explain to Lord Castlereagh …”
Her gray eyes turned steely. “And what exactly will you explain, Rowland?”
“Why, that you considered it sufficient …” His voice died away. She was not listening, however, and it was not until later that she understood what he did not say.
Just now, she rose from the brocaded settee. “Thank you, Rowland,” she said absently and walked swiftly in the direction of her rooms. He rose belatedly to his feet and watched after her.
She hadn’t even touched her chocolate, he marveled.
*
Moments later, she emerged from the rooms she shared with her aunt. Phrynie was, as usual, somewhere being amused by her new friend Josef Salvator. Nell was left lonely, but on the other hand there was no one to ask her where she was going. This was as well, for she did not quite know. She needed to ask some searching questions of her brother, wherever he might be.
Quite some time later, she caught sight of him in the distance. A drive from the street below curved around before the front entrance of the palace. Another, narrower road took off at a tangent to lead to the outbuildings spreading out behind the palace. Toward the back of the palace itself, on this service road, she saw Tom and another man in close colloquy.
She hurried toward them. She had come within calling distance when Tom looked up. Obviously aware that she was angry, for she had let her cloak fly out behind her and she was walking in a determined manner, he left the other man and in a moment disappeared behind some buildings.
She stopped short. She would have run after him shouting his name had she been at home, but she was among strangers. Even Tom’s companion, watching her approach, was a stranger to her, even though she knew him well.
“Reeves!” she said when she drew near. “I wanted to talk to Tom, but the coward has vanished.”
Reeves again wore the amused expression that she had grown accustomed to — and sorely missed. “Coward? Any man might flee if an avenging angel was bearing down on him.”
“B-but you did not.”
“I did not see you in time,” he said, his features impassive, but his hazel eyes laughing.
“Nonsense!” She should have returned the way she had come and caught Tom at another time and place. She stood where she was, loath to leave.
A small silence fell between them. At length, the coachman inquired, “Shall I wish you happy?”
“Happy?”
“You came to Vienna, as I believe, to be with your fiance, Lord Foxhall.”
“Not quite affianced, Reeves,” said Nell. “Not quite yet. He wishes to speak to my brother.”
“And your brother is here. So we may expect to hear the good news at any moment, I suspect.”
Her mind was far from Rowland and her delirious happiness at seeing him again. In truth, she had not yet come upon the state of ecstasy. Instead, she inquired, “Reeves, you remember that parcel.”
He raised his eyebrows. “How could I forget it?”
“It was not the true parcel.” She eyed him closely. She could not discern any element of surprise in him.
“Then all our efforts were for naught?”
She suspected that he was more curious about the extent of her knowledge of the parcel than he was about the item itself. There was no need for secrecy any more. “I delivered the parcel myself to Lord Castlereagh not an hour since,” she told him, “as I had undertaken to do. I am told — not by the minister, but by Lord Foxhall — that another parcel, that one containing the important papers, had already come to them.”
“How strange.”
“I am persuaded you do not find it strange at all, Reeves. I wish to know what part you had in deceiving me.”
He thought for a moment. “Indeed, I should think that you should be expressing gratitude to your brother for his consideration of you rathe
r than flying up in the boughs.”
“Gratitude! For making me out the veriest kind of pea-witted fool?”
His mocking amusement vanished. “It was your brother’s thought, Miss Aspinall, that your fiancé — or almost fiancé, whatever his status is might take it amiss were you to arrive in Vienna, your heart on your sleeve. Indeed, while I could not quite believe that any man worthy of the name would resent such evidence of devotion, Tom claimed more intimate knowledge of Lord Foxhall. I, of course, bowed to his decision.”
At the most inopportune moment imaginable, she recalled that sentence that Rowland had cropped short. He would explain to Lord Castlereagh that the parcel was considered by Nell sufficient to…
Sufficient to serve as an excuse to join Rowland!
Her anger was directed less at the vain Lord Foxhall, who considered her efforts as no more than his due, than at herself.
Rowland had read her own motives far too well!
Chapter Twenty-Seven
She came back to herself to see a pair of hazel eyes full of anxiety for her.
“Was Tom wrong?” asked Reeves softly. “Should we have told you that he was taking the genuine package?”
“I should not have worried so, if he had. It’s no matter, truly, about the parcel. It was urgent to get it here, and that was of the first importance. It is simply that …” A sob rose in her throat.
“That no one trusted you. I see that.”
She looked intently at him. Surprisingly he did see that she was hurt because no one thought her intelligent enough to know the truth.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was all wrong.”
She was recovering her usual good nature. “If I had not been so foolish at the start …” She remembered that Reeves had no notion of how the ill-starred journey had started, how she had cozened Mr. Haveney, how she had even persuaded her aunt against her wishes to set out. “No matter,” she went on. “It’s done now.”
She could hear someone coming from the mews behind the palace. She turned to go. Reeves stopped her. “I am giving up my employment. It’s back to the country for me.”
She did not know what she answered. On the one hand, she could not wish him luck in a new employment as coachman, for there lay too much intimacy between them. Nor could she tell him that she would miss him, for there was the abyss between their respective conditions of life.
She did the only thing possible — she turned and, picking up her skirts, fled. If she had looked back, she might have seen Reeves watching her gravely, but she did not.
At the front of the palace, feeling tears stinging the back of her eyelids and longing only to fling herself on her bed and cry — cry for Tom’s high-handed ways, for Rowland’s satisfied vanity, for Reeves, for Reeves — she met Penelope Freeland.
“Miss Aspinall,” said the light cool voice. “I heard that you had arrived in Vienna.”
Nell looked up into the light blue eyes of the woman standing above her on the steps. “Yes, we did.” The faintest stress on the pronoun was not lost on Miss Freeland.
“Wasn’t that your coachman to whom you were speaking just now?”
Nell realized then that Penelope, like herself, was returning to the palace. “My aunt’s coachman.”
“There is something familiar about him. But then of course I must have seen him many times in London. One hardly looks at a servant of course.”
Nell did not feel obliged to explain that this particular coachman had never driven them in London. Nor, she knew, would he drive them again. She said, in a lofty tone, “I was giving him my aunt’s instructions.”
“To carry you to the archduke’s ball tonight, doubtless. It did not take long for him to open up the Salvator Palace, did it? I understand that he too arrived only yesterday, in your company. Your aunt seems to charm gentlemen to her own advantage, does she not?”
“Doubtless,” said Nell sweetly, “because gentlemen find a woman with such feminine ways a rarity.”
Penelope turned caustic. “I consider it beneath my dignity to flatter any man. I am no hypocrite. If a man cannot see what is for his own good, then he should be instructed.”
Nell’s eyes glittered. “One must certainly admire anyone who knows what is best, not only for herself but for everyone around her. What should we ever do without our self-appointed mentors?”
She swept up the stairs, leaving Penelope looking as surprised as if a kitten had clawed her. Nell’s strong irritation was not soothed by finding Rowland in her own sitting room, waiting for her.
“Where have you been?” he asked, nettled at his long wait.
“Out.”
“I can see that.” He was on the verge of asking where but thought better of it.
“What did you come to tell me, Rowland?” she demanded. She was not in a mood to sustain frivolous conversation. “Have you looked into that parcel I left with the minister?”
He reddened. “The parcel is not relevant. I came in hopes of having a private interview with you. Not for the first time, as you know, but I venture to hope that this occasion will find all in order.”
She looked at him blankly. “What on earth are you talking about?”
He smiled. “I must express my admiration for your quite proper reticence. But I assure you that it is quite unnecessary for you to pretend not to understand the purpose of my visit, especially when your brother has quite kindly put himself in the way of my approaching him to ask his approval of my offer.”
She sat down abruptly. This particular moment had been the goal of her privations and her acceptance of unexpected perils. She had longed for Rowland to make his offer, for Tom to accept the desirability of Lord Foxhall, heir to an earldom, as a brother-in-law, and for the inevitable result of such a felicitous circumstance — a lifetime of bliss.
She contemplated, as though she had not previously seen them, her hands folded in her lap. Now that the exalted moment had arrived, she could not properly concentrate on it. She was well aware that a young lady’s first offer was one which should be enshrined in memory. Just now she could not recall what he had said.
She hesitated too long. Rowland, disturbed at her lack of beatific response, was moved to speech. “Surely you were aware of my intentions. I told you as much in London, that as soon as I could gain your brother’s approval, I should offer you marriage.” He eyed her warily. “As well as my prospects, you know, being in the direct line for the title and a sufficiency of income of which I have already satisfied your brother, I dare to hope that you will find the life I have chosen — as a diplomatist, you know — one of constant satisfaction to you.”
His life as a diplomatist aside, she thought, she could not but look at dead dry years ahead, without humor or wit — of which Rowland was deprived at birth — but with an oversufficiency of self-satisfaction, long-winded prosing, and overweening dignity.
“Rowland, we shall not suit.”
“Not suit!” He was aghast. “Not suit? What then do you want?”
She could not tell him what she wanted. She wanted someone who would sympathize and share her troubles — like climbing in illicit windows. She longed for someone to be tender of her welfare, keeping watch, if it were required, on the landing all night.
And above all, she ached for someone who could be swept away by sheer desire for her love to forget his status in life and deal with her like a woman and not a diplomatic treaty! “I am sorry, Rowland. My affections have altered.”
“Altered!”
“Pray, Rowland, do not repeat my every word. Just understand — try to understand — that I can never marry you.”
“Then — then you didn’t come with that ridiculous parcel just to — to marry me?”
“Indeed, I did not.” What was truth, after all?
He gathered his dignity around him almost visibly, like a Roman toga. At the door, he paused to deliver one more pronouncement. “I am grateful that at least I had sense enough not to put a premature announcement in th
e Gazette. I should not like to look the fool.”
“But,” said Nell, aroused, “you were willing enough to brand me an idiot for so far forgetting decorum as to chase you across Europe with a parcel of nothing as an excuse? What kind of fool do you take me for?”
“But,” said Rowland with every appearance of reason, “you are female. And no one expects logic from a woman.”
*
She seethed until late afternoon and time to dress for the archduke’s ball. She was sitting in her dressing gown staring into the mirror when her aunt entered.
“Whatever is the matter, Nell?” she cried. “You haven’t begun to dress. What are you to wear? I’ll send Mullins to you!”
“No need, Aunt. I am ready but for my gown.”
“Do not delay, child. We are to be there early. Josef is sending his coach for us, and I do not wish to keep the horses standing.”
Nell looked sharply at her aunt. An odd note in Phrynie’s voice was reflected as well in an unaccustomed expression of doubt. “You, worried about keeping cattle standing, Aunt? This is not like you.”
Phrynie laughed, not merrily. “I know it isn’t. In truth I do not quite know what is like me anymore. You know that Josef is related to the Emperor? His wife — I mean Josef’s — died several years ago, about the same time as Sanford, isn’t that an odd coincidence?”
“Quite likely several hundreds more died at the same time, Aunt.”
Phrynie took a turn around the small bedroom. “I declare I never —” She whirled back to face Nell. “Nell, do you think I would like living in Austria?”
Phrynie’s vulnerable expression moved Nell to the verge of tears. “Aunt, really? Is it something you would like?”
“Oh, Nell, I’m so fuddled I can’t tell what I would like. But he is so kind, and so considerate…”
Nell sprang up to hug her aunt. “Oh, I am delighted for you, so happy, you deserve everything…”
Wiping a tear from her cheek, Phrynie said, “What about you? For I shall not dare to be happy until I have you settled!”
Nell kept silent. How could she dash her aunt’s visible happiness by telling her that her own marriage would not now take place? The answer was evident. “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “I shall not wish to be the cause of the archduke’s cattle standing in the cold!”