by Aileen Fish
The carriage drew to a stop in front of a respectable but far from resplendent home. That was fine. Either she could learn to live with reduced circumstances or he could learn to live on her money. They would resolve it. For that matter, by the laws of England, her money would become his upon the finalization of the marriage. What sort of man didn’t want to become rich by such an easy measure? Her footman let down the steps and she marched up to the door and rapped on it smartly. It was opened rather quickly by a man that was hardly taller than herself.
“How may I help you, madam?”
His accent was similar to her beloved. “I am here to see Casimir.”
The doorman’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he ushered her in and led her to a parlor. The seating was a bit sparse, but the walls were a lovely color of ivory trimmed in gold. After a few moments the door opened again and she turned, expecting to see her lover. The man at the door was similar in stature, a brother perhaps?
“Hullo Miss-?” Although his voice was similar to Casimir’s, it wasn’t the same.
“Jarvis,” she supplied.
“Miss Jarvis,” he said warmly, as though testing the feel of her name on his tongue. “Have we met before?”
“No,” she answered shortly. “I am here to see Casimir. Is he here?”
He tipped his head to the side, as though she had said something very intriguing. “This Casimir you are here to see, you know him then?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, wondering why he was being coy.
“Could you describe him?”
“Well, he’s about your height and has similar coloring. I assume he might be your brother?”
A smile tugged at the man’s lips as though she were telling a joke he was waiting to hear the ending to. “I don’t have any brothers,” he said. “But I do have a name. I’m the only Casimir in this house.”
She drew back. “My apologies, there must be some mistake. I asked my men to find the residence of Casimir Rokiczana.”
He chuckled. “Although you slaughter the pronunciation of my last name, I do recognize it. And I can almost guarantee you that I will be the only Casimir Rokiczana you will find in England.”
Elisa could feel all the blood draining from her face. Her ears filled with a buzzing and everything sounded very far away. Her distress must have been clear because she saw Mr. Rokiczana’s sudden look of concern.
“Are you all right?” he asked. But his voice sounded so far away that he might as well have been in the next room. There were other noises she couldn’t quite make sense of. Voices and running steps.
She heard her name in a now-familiar voice. “Miss Jarvis!”
Surprise made her react. “Mr. Howards?” Even her own voice sounded far away to her ears.
Casimir Rokiczana greeted his latest guest warmly, calling him by his first name John, but Mr. Howards’ attention was still riveted on her. “Miss Jarvis, you need to sit down,” he said.
She wasn’t sitting down? Well, that hardly signified. With them standing side by side she could see that the two men were of a similar height and coloring. That the truth was completely obvious if she’d been paying any attention at all. Her lips felt stiff and cold, but she forced them to form words. “You lying bastard.” She felt light-headed and queasy, but she would die before letting that duplicitous horror of a man see her faint or stumble. She held her head up and made her way toward the door.
“Wait, Miss Jarvis,” the ‘real’ Casimir said. “You don’t look well. My wife can accompany you home.”
“No need,” she said sternly. The ‘real’ Casimir was already married, as well. She kept walking, only her willpower and sense of dignity keeping her erect. By God, John Howards was going to pay for this. She didn’t know how yet, but he was going to pay.
Chapter Fourteen
“There may come a point at which you will need to ask yourself if this is a seduction or a relationship. I have no advice for you on the latter case.” ~ Lord Lucifer
John watched Elisa walk away as Casimir turned to his servant Wladek and whispered some instructions. Once Wladek had left on whatever task he had been sent on, Casimir crossed his arms and grinned.
“Well. What was that about?”
John would expect that in a situation like this he would freeze up and be unable to speak. That the shame and anxiety would overwhelm him. Instead, he felt nearly nothing. Just a sharp yearning to make things right with Elisa. “I didn’t realize you were in London,” he began.
Casimir’s grin widened. How on earth could all this amuse the man? As John remained silent, Casimir prompted, “And what happened?”
John rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the ground. He forced himself to look his friend in the eye again. As painful as it was going to be to lose a friend, it was only honorable to be forthright about what he had done. “I may have- Well, I did attend a masque ball. As you.”
Casimir’s head cocked back in surprise. “A masque ball? As me? How did you accomplish that?”
“Oh, you know. Dark clothing, a cape, a mask, and an accent.”
Casimir laughed. “Truly?”
John shifted uneasily. “Yes.”
His friend began laughing in earnest, finally bending over to clutch his stomach.
“Can I say I’m sorry?” John ventured.
“What’s so funny?” a feminine voice inquired from the doorway. John looked over to see the willowy blonde he knew as Mrs. Appleton.
“Mrs.-?”
“Rokiczana,” she supplied, walking toward him with her hands stretched out to clasp his. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Howards.” She turned to her husband. “What’s so funny, Cas?”
Casimir straightened and dropped one arm over his wife’s shoulders. “John here attended a masque recently. Rather than be a Greek hero or even Casanova, he decided to be me.”
His wife snorted and looked back at John. “Don’t encourage him.”
Casimir chuckled. “I think I should teach him to rob carriages.”
John looked at his friend quizzically. “Rob carriages?”
“Never mind that,” Casimir redirected. “I certainly hope you didn’t compromise the lady.”
“What lady?” Mrs. Rokiczana asked.
“The one who seemed to have come looking for my head on a plate,” her husband told her.
“Actually,” John said, “she wants to marry you.”
“That isn’t a possibility,” Mrs. Rokiczana said flatly.
“Of course not, ukochany,” her husband confirmed. Casimir looked back to John. “It’s a good thing I was here to receive her. If she had told her story to Gini I’m sure we never would have found the body.”
Mrs. Rokiczana seemed unruffled by Casimir’s statement and looked at John. “Why does she want to marry my husband?”
“I think she would rather cast in her lot with a foreign stranger than any of the suitors she has met here in London.”
Now it was Mrs. Rokiczana’s turn to tip her head to the side in thought. “Highly unlikely. It was something you said or did. Did you ask her to marry you?”
John could feel his cheeks heating but brazened on. “No, I did not. And I have only met with her a handful of times.”
“A handful?” Casimir exclaimed. “Did you continue the ruse past that one night?”
“Yes,” John admitted. “I met with her twice more as you.”
Casimir looked at his wife. “He’s as bad as you are. I really must be more careful in how I pick my associates.”
“Beg pardon?” John said, confused. It was apparent that much more had happened between the couple than had been evident at the Congress of Vienna. For instance, how had she rid herself of Mr. Appleton?
“Oh, Gini only lied to me about her identity for the first eight months of our acquaintance.”
Rather than look abashed, Mrs. Rokiczana rolled her eyes.
“So you were never truly married to Appleton?” John guessed.
“No,” she c
onfirmed. “Fortunate for him, because his is definitely a body no one would have found if I had to be chained to him in matrimony.”
As Mrs. Appleton, now Mrs. Rokiczana, had been part of the British delegation, John had actually seen her quite a bit over the eight months they had been at the Congress together. John had both arrived to the Congress earlier and stayed longer, but she had been there long enough for John to feel he knew her a bit. Now he had to question what he really knew. Other than the obvious attraction that had grown between his Polish friend and the girl. An attraction that had apparently been deeper than he had known.
“I apologize for intruding on your day, but when I received your letter and realized you were in London, I knew that it would be important to admit what I had done. It never occurred to me that she might have tracked you down.”
“Yes, you two had the timing of a Greek drama,” Casimir said. “Perhaps your ladylove has calmed down enough now to listen to your apology.”
“I’m quite sure she will have nothing more to do with me.”
“On the contrary, a woman doesn’t shift from wanting to marry you to never wanting to see you again. Not really, even if she says so.”
“She didn’t want to marry me,” John protested. “She wanted to marry you.”
Now it was Casimir’s turn to roll his eyes. “No, she wanted to marry you with an accent.”
“That’s just it. It had more to do with being a foreigner, a stranger, than anything about me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If she just wanted to marry a foreigner she would have done so by now. I’m not the only one in London, you know.”
John took a moment to ponder Casimir’s words. There were, certainly, men of foreign birth at almost all the entertainments one could hope to attend in London. Wealthy, titled men. Or, even better for her purposes, impoverished, titled men. She had practically begged him to marry her, promising that her money could support them both. Certainly this wasn’t an offer she made often. The only reason he had refused was because of his lies. He could no more have let her marry him under the pretense of his false identity than he could swim the English Channel. She deserved better than that. She deserved better than him. But bloody hell, she deserved better than the pack of hounds that lounged in her receiving room, as well. She deserved better than to be forced into a marriage she didn’t want by her guardian.
She had already judged him and found him wanting when presenting himself as John Howards, but somehow he would find a way to convince her that he was the man she wanted to marry. The man she had already begged to marry.
Chapter Fifteen
“The most dangerous part of any woman are her expectations. Try to make sure she doesn’t have any for you.” ~ Lord Lucifer
Elisa did the only thing she knew to do when in such a state. She threw herself on the sympathy of her good neighbor, Violetta. V had always been a true and supportive friend, less anxious and judgmental than cousin Fanny, who worried about every potential misstep that Elisa might make in Society. Once she and V said their pleasantries and were seated in V’s morning room, Elisa finally allowed herself to think about what had happened so that she could create a logical narrative of things she could tell Violetta without indulging too much.
“What has happened, Elisa? You look near traumatized.” V’s eyes were full of sympathy.
Elisa waited until she had taken a bracing sip of tea before she replied. “A bounder has run off all my suitors, and at just the wrong time. Emberly has decided that I must choose a husband before my next birthday or he will choose one for me.”
“Oh no, Lis! That can’t be true. Your birthday is just after mine. That’s hardly any time at all!”
“I know! On any typical day I would be delighted that someone made those vultures and peacocks slink off, but now I need to choose one of them!”
“Who drove them off?”
Elisa frowned fiercely down into her tea. “John Howards.”
“Beg pardon?” Violetta said faintly.
Elisa looked up to see her friend with a strange expression.
“Did you say John Howards? It isn’t my cousin, surely.” Violetta gave a nervous laugh. “Of course it isn’t. John could hardly drive off a hungry cat, much less a room full of suitors.”
Elisa simply stared. John, the cousin Violetta hadn’t expected would accept an invitation to the masque. Of course it was the same John Howards. She needed to leave, now, before she admitted to Vi that she would happily kill that cousin in his sleep. Something in her expression must have betrayed that she suddenly knew that were talking of the same man because Violetta launched to her feet.
“You’re the reason.”
“I’m the reason?” Yes, escape seemed best.
“Why John has had such a change of heart of late.” Violetta’s eyes welled with tears before she leaned down to wrap Elisa in a hug. “Oh thank you, thank you so much.”
Elisa wiggled in an attempt to get out of Violetta’s grasp, but the woman knew how to hug. “What is it you think I’ve done?”
“What I couldn’t. Made John understand what it means to love.”
Elisa wriggled again. “I assure you that I did not do that.”
Violetta finally released her, but then sat on the tiny settee beside her, holding her hand. “Regardless how everything else works out, yes, at least you’ve done that.”
“I think you overestimate our feelings for each other.”
“That he has any feelings at all for you is something of a wonder.”
Elisa felt herself bristle, even though he wasn’t hers to defend. “If you have affection for him yourself, you shouldn’t talk about him that way.”
V shrugged. “John is John. He’s terribly hard to get to know. It’s like befriending a clam, really.”
“That’s not true.”
The look that Violetta gave her was so skeptical that even Elisa began to doubt herself. Then she thought back to the interaction she’d had with him, both as Casimir and as himself. “He can be a bit reserved at times,” she admitted.
“A bit?”
“But he’s funny, and protective, and forthright.” She smirked. “When he’s not baldly lying about everything.”
“Lying about everything?”
Elisa felt her eyes well up. “Oh, V. It’s so terrible and I don’t think I shall ever get over it.”
“Get over what?”
“When we met at the masque he told me that he was someone else. A dashing foreigner. I completely fell in love with him, but that’s not who he is at all.”
Violetta blinked. “When you met John he was a dashing foreigner?”
Elisa nodded and pulled a handkerchief from her reticule. “Yes.”
“That’s why you were asking after all the foreigners in attendance?”
“He teased me when we ran into each other that the reason I looked sad was because we hadn’t been introduced. I was hoping to finagle an introduction through you.”
“John teased you?”
“Yes. Why do you keep repeating everything I say?”
“I’m just trying to make it fit in my mind.”
“Yes, he teased me. And, if I may be so bold as to ask you to keep a confidence, he kissed me. I think that’s when I knew I was in love.”
“John kissed you. At my ball.”
“Yes. Why is this all so hard to believe?”
“That doesn’t sound like John. Either that or he has always detested me and I was too slow to figure it out.”
“You didn’t want him to kiss you, did you?”
“No! Ew, no. That’s not what I mean. It’s just, well, it took me three solid summers before I could get him to talk to me in complete sentences.” Violetta was looking perplexed now and Elisa had to have some sympathy for her friend.
“He can be a bit shy in social situations. The first time we danced he wanted to answer questions with a simple yes or no.”
“John dances? Was that at my ball?”
“No, it was at the Hartly soirée last week. I don›t think you were there.»
Violetta stood suddenly. “I’m not sure I want to hear any more.”
“What’s wrong? What did I say?”
“I worry over him for years, and now he is attending balls, dancing, and seducing young women while in disguise?”
“Why did you worry over him?”
“John never had any friends. He couldn’t handle even the simplest of social situations. Now he’s playing with my children, at least speaking to my husband, and doing whatever it is he’s doing with you.”
“It sounds like you should be happy for him.”
“I am. I just may also kill him, too, for all the worry he’s put me through.”
There was a brief knock at the door before Violetta’s butler opened it. “Announcing John Howards, my lady.”
Chapter Sixteen
“And I suggest that you never reveal the source of your expertise.” ~ Lord Lucifer
John had returned to Violetta in hopes of getting her advice on how to approach Elisa, how to apologize. The last thing he expected was to find Elisa in his cousin’s sitting room.
“Ladies,” he said, bowing to them.
Elisa looked as though she had been crying. He wasn’t sure quite how to read Violetta’s expression. The three of them stared at each other awkwardly for a moment. Finally Violetta asked, “What brings you here, John?”
“I, ah, I had hoped for some advice. Perhaps another time?” He considered bolting out the door before either of them could say anything, but Violetta’s expression bothered him. She looked hurt or sad. He had to stay to find out if he was somehow to blame.
She sauntered over to him as he stood near the door, rather than inviting him in to the conversational circle. “Elisa says that you can dance.”
“I, well, yes.”
“That wasn’t even a complete sentence, John.”
“I’m a viscount’s son and attended the best public schools. Of course I can dance. Not particularly well, but I’m passable. As Castlereagh made us attend every ball in Vienna, I may have become a bit better.”