by Liz Carlyle
Bathed in a slanting shaft of morning sun, the elegant young woman scarcely resembled the earth goddess he’d met last night. Miss de Rohan was roaming along one of the bookshelves, pausing occasionally to tug out one of the volumes, flip it open, then shove it back again, as if nothing could possibly please her.
Today she wore a brilliantly hued walking dress of royal-blue silk faced with black satin, her mass of dark hair caught in a loose, untidy arrangement that looked as if she’d tucked it up as an afterthought. This precarious arrangement was topped by a little hat set at an almost rakish angle; a confection of black ribbons and blue ruching trimmed with three black feathers. To complete the ensemble, a black velvet reticule on a tasseled silk cord swung merrily from her wrist.
She wasn’t precisely beautiful, no, and the dress was perhaps more striking than strictly à la mode. But the hat—ah, now the hat hinted at a certain impudence. On the whole, it made for an almost breathtakingly lovely vision.
She shoved the last of her perusals back into place with a quiet little sigh. “Pray do not keep me in suspense, Lord Bessett,” she said without looking at him. “Are you still angry with me, I wonder?”
Startled, Geoff strolled into the room, his hands clasped behind his back. How on earth had she seen him, when she’d not once turned her head?
“Does it matter if I’m angry?” he asked.
She sighed again, then spun about to face him. “Just to be clear, I’m not one of those silly misses who goes haring about stirring up trouble for sport,” she answered. “Yes, it matters. Is that really what you thought last night? That I wouldn’t be back? That this was a lark?”
Geoff was no longer sure what he thought. “Miss de Rohan, might I ask—what brought you to this strange point in life?”
“I beg your pardon?” She lifted her slanting black eyebrows. “What point is that?”
Carefully he measured his words, but there were things he needed to understand. “You must know that your actions last night put your reputation in grave jeopardy,” he said. “An unmarried lady of good breeding—”
“—showing her shift and her ankles in public?” she finished, her hands clasped almost modestly before her. “Indeed, but I know, too, what the ceremony requires, and how much your Preost values it. I did what I could bear to do. I compromised. I am not . . . brazen, Lord Bessett. Well, not in that way.”
Geoff tried not to scowl. “If you meant to go through with such folly, you could have met first with the Reverend Mr. Sutherland and—”
“And given him the chance to refuse me straight out?”
“—and asked for a special dispensation.”
She took a step toward him, hands still clasped, her black velvet reticule swinging from her wrist. “One must begin as one means to go on, Lord Bessett,” she said, her voice far too husky for his comfort. “A woman cannot expect to be treated as anything near an equal if she sets out by asking for special favors. Besides, we both know that the ceremony clearly states that the sponsor must introduce his candidate at the initiation—a ritual that dates to the twelfth century. Tradition is everything to the Fraternitas. I was not about to be the one who broke with it—not any more than I had to.”
“I understand what tradition means to us, Miss de Rohan,” he said, gentling his tone. “But I know, too, what a young lady’s reputation means to her in England. Times have changed a little, perhaps, for unmarried females of good breeding. But not that much.”
“To be perfectly honest, Lord Bessett, my breeding is nothing to be bragged about,” said Miss de Rohan coolly. “I’ve got trade on one side, and a long line of rakes and rapscallions on the other. In his youth, my father actually worked for a time as a Bow Street Runner. On those rare occasions he entered a gentleman’s home, it was generally through the servants’ entrance. Did you know that about him? No, I thought not.”
He had not known. “Well, if he was, it was because he chose to be,” he smoothly countered. “He did not have to do so merely to earn a living.”
She dropped her chin and looked up at him chidingly. “So, when a man lowers himself, it is a noble sacrifice, but when a woman tries to do it, it is a lark?” she suggested. “My father has an obsession with justice, yes. Watching your father being burned alive by revolutionaries will do that to you. And I could do worse than to follow in his footsteps.”
Geoff narrowed his gaze. “Is that how you see this?”
She shrugged lightly. “However I see it, your concern for me is moot,” she continued. “We both know the Fraternitas is sworn by blood to secrecy. And all of you have seen more than your share of pretty ankles before. But somehow, I’m not sure that’s what you are getting at here.”
“No,” he said. “No, it isn’t.”
She strolled along one of the tufted leather sofas, pausing to draw her fingers in a slow, almost sensual gesture over a marble bust of Parmenides that sat on a little table behind it. He could not pull his eyes away from her. And today, absent the rush of temper and emotion, the woman seemed oddly familiar to him.
He was almost certain he had met her before, but he searched his mind and came up empty. He must be mistaken. She would never blend into the ton’s crowd of simpering, pale-faced beauties. Would never be the sort of woman a man forgot once he’d met her.
She lifted that hot black gaze and pinned him with it. “I am not going away, Lord Bessett,” she said softly. “I can’t give up that easily. I owe that much to my great-grandmother, and to Vittorio. I want to know if my records have been reviewed by the Preost. I want to know if there is any reason the St. James Society refuses me, other than my sex. Can you answer that for me, sir? Or must I camp on your doorstep until the Preost comes out? And pray tell him not to bother with the back gardens and that hidden passageway to St. James Park. I was on to that trick by the age of ten.”
At that, he laughed aloud. The notion of Anaïs de Rohan laying siege to poor old Sutherland was . . . well, entirely plausible, really.
“I am glad, Lord Bessett, that you find me so vastly entertaining,” she said.
“I must confess, you do begin to grow on a fellow.” Then he sobered his tone. “But a woman will never be admitted to the Fraternitas. I’m sorry. I don’t know why your great-grandmother thought it possible.”
“But I did everything that was—”
He held up a staying hand. “And I believe you,” he said. “Vittorio’s records reflect it. He was the strongest of our Advocati in the Mediterranean. He was willing to fight for what he believed in, and he was no man’s fool.”
At that, something like grief sketched across her face. “No, he was not. He was . . . he was . . .” Her words withering, she turned and paced suddenly to the window.
Geoff had never been especially softhearted, but something inside his chest lurched all the same. “Miss de Rohan,” he said, following to touch her lightly on the shoulder. “I did not mean to—”
She was already dashing at her eyes with the back of her wrist. “It’s all right,” she said hastily. “It’s just that . . . he was my kinsman. My mentor. And I just miss him a little, that’s all.”
“The entire Fraternitas misses him,” said Geoff softly, drawing back his hand.
She lifted her gaze to the window, and stared down at St. James’s Place below. He could see a hint of her reflection shimmering in the glass below his own; her wide, mobile mouth a little tremulous beneath eyes that were hollow with grief.
They were like lightness and dark seen together thus; her dark gown and black tresses against his sun-streaked hair and brilliant white cravat. It was but the most obvious of their differences, he did not doubt. There would be many more buried deeper, and far harder to flesh out.
But he did not need to flesh out a bloody thing with Anaïs de Rohan. He did not need to know her at all. He merely needed her to accompany him to Brussels for a few weeks.
Which was the same thing as saying he wished her to toss her good reputation to the four winds
.
And to work and travel cheek by jowl with a woman as vivacious as she, and not get to know her? Christ, both were unthinkable.
But not undoable. Not unsurvivable. Not when there was a child’s life at stake. A child who, even now, was almost certainly terrified and confused. Giselle Moreau’s guardian was dead. The child had been left with no one to guide her—let alone protect her—through the most difficult years of her life, those years when she would have to come to grips with the terrible truth about herself. To accept that she was different. That she was cursed with a gift that was no sort of gift at all.
He knew what it would be like for Giselle Moreau, for he had lived through it.
The child must be brought to England, and assigned a new Guardian. She must be kept safe during this terrible, vulnerable phase. And if that meant he had to live with Anaïs de Rohan—had to look into those hot-chocolate eyes of hers every day over breakfast, and not lay a hand on the woman—then, yes. It was doable. It was survivable.
But she was looking at him in the window now, all too aware that he had been watching her. Geoff grappled for some inoffensive line of conversation.
“Tell me, what was he like, Vittorio?” he finally asked.
“Old,” she said with a thready laugh. “Old, and very, very Tuscan. But from the age of twelve, I spent a few months each year with him, and came to love him like a grandfather. Even though at first . . . at first I really did not wish to go. But I know he wanted what was best for me.”
Geoff gently turned her from the window. “Did he want . . . all this for you?” he asked, opening his arms expansively. “The decision was your great-grandmother’s, but what did Vittorio think?”
Her gaze shuttered for an instant, and he thought she might refuse to answer.
“He had misgivings,” she finally admitted. “What man would not? But Vittorio was from a different time. A different way of life. We live in a changing world, Lord Bessett. Even the Fraternitas is changing—and you have been the instrument of that change. Heavens, you have consolidated all the records and genealogies, built laboratories and libraries, and brought together a once far-flung group from across the Continent. Why is it so beyond you to think that a woman might have something to offer as a Guardian?”
“Women do have much to offer,” he acknowledged. “They always have had. For example, I was trained by my . . . well, by a dear friend of my family. A Scottish seer. A woman who was very influential within the Fraternitas, and not without considerable power. She gave much of herself. Many of our most powerful Vateis are women, and always have been.”
“And yet there is no place for me?” Miss de Rohan lifted her chin defiantly. “Admittedly, I am not much of a Vates, Lord Bessett. I can read the tarot—Nonna Sofia taught me—and I sometimes . . . well, I can sometimes guess what people are thinking, or feel their presence. Nonetheless, I am strong and resolute and willing. I believe in the F.A.C. and its noble mission. So I ask you again—is there no place for me here?”
“You are a friend to the Fraternitas, Miss de Rohan,” he said. “You will always be that. Vittorio and your great-grandmother have seen to it. Over time, yes, you might become one of those women of great influence within the sect.”
“And that is it, then?” Her voice dropped dejectedly. “That will be the Fraternitas’s final answer to my ten long years of struggle?”
For a long moment, Geoff considered what he was about to say—and his motivations for saying it. He had the oddest sensation of diving into something that looked almost bottomless. Something that would doubtless be cool and refreshing and a little shocking to the system when one hit the surface and plunged deep. But a mystery lay within those depths all the same.
“Actually, there might—if you are willing—there might be a way you could help us.”
“I should help you?” she asked, her voice faintly incredulous. “You do not want me, but I should help you?”
“Just hear me out,” he said. “And then . . . say no if it pleases you. I daresay you should do, honestly. And I have no doubt whatever that it is what your father would wish you to say.”
“Lord Bessett.” She stepped incrementally nearer. “I am a woman grown, and I can manage my father’s crushed expectations—and frankly, he hasn’t many, crushed or otherwise. He is not exactly your typical English gentleman.”
“He isn’t even English, is he?”
“Not by blood, perhaps.” She flashed a sardonic smile. “But as you guessed, I’m English born and bred. I grew up in Gloucestershire and London, save for those few months each year when I went to Tuscany. But let us get back to your expectations—what was it you wanted of me?”
Geoff considered how best to explain. “It is awkward,” he said. “I need a woman—”
She trilled with laughter. “Do you indeed?” she said. “With those gold-bronze locks and that jawline of yours, I shouldn’t think it much of a problem.”
“Miss de Rohan—”
“It must be those grim eyes,” she interjected, circling as if he were horseflesh on the block at Tattersall’s. “Oh, they are handsome, but they do not quite inspire poetry—not the swooning female sort of poetry, at any rate.”
Geoff looked down at her, deliberately arching one brow. “A crushing blow indeed,” he murmured. “But skill with a pen is not one of the talents I ordinarily look for in a woman.”
At that, a slow, lazy smile curled her mouth. “Is it not?” she murmured. “Then perhaps you do not look high enough, my lord.”
He managed a smile. “But we digress. Here, let me try and get a proper chokehold on this conversation.” He motioned toward the matched leather sofas that sat opposite each other near the hearth. “Would you kindly sit down, Miss de Rohan? I should have asked sooner but something about you throws me out.”
“I’ve been told I have that effect on people,” she said. “Fine, thank you. I shall sit. And you will tell me what it is you wish me to do.”
Geoff bought himself a few moments by ringing for coffee, which Miss de Rohan assured him she took hot, black, and very strong. Strangely, he could have guessed as much.
While waiting, he forced himself to make very dull, very proper conversation about the English weather, the start of the London Season, and Town society in general.
But Miss de Rohan was having little of it. She was ambivalent about the first, unaware of the second, and generally disdainful of the later—reminding him once again that no matter how hard he tried, he would likely never see her in the usual way.
Once the coffee had been poured, he gave up and got right to the point, repeating almost verbatim DuPont’s story of Giselle Moreau and her father’s untimely death.
When she was finished, she put down her coffee cup, now empty, and leaned back against the sofa. “And this address in Brussels,” she said, “it is a town house, I collect?”
“So I’m told.”
“Can you climb?”
“Climb?”
“Trees,” she said. “Downspouts. Ropes. In short, are you still nimble, my lord? Or has the stiffness of age set in along with that rigid attitude of yours?”
“Good God, Miss de Rohan!” Geoff was insulted. “I’m not yet thirty.” Which was true, but only just. “Yes, I can climb. What has that to do with anything?”
“Well, you could take me along with you to Brussels,” she said. “You are going to Brussels, I collect? Otherwise, someone else would be telling me this story. So we’ll go together. I’ll befriend this woman—ingratiate myself with her, even—then manage to slip into the nursery and unfasten one of the window locks. Then you can climb up at night—or I can—and snatch the child whilst a carriage waits below, and we’ll be off to Ostend by—oh, two or three in the morning.”
“Just like that?” he said dryly.
“Just like that,” she said. “It cannot be above eighty miles to the coast. Once the trains begin to run—about half past five, I should think—we can abandon the carriage in Ghent,
and arrive at the port in time for breakfast.”
“I begin to believe you and Lazonby should take this on,” he grumbled. “One blunt instrument to beat upon another—that might drive the spike through the poor woman’s heart in half the time.”
“What poor woman?” Miss de Rohan’s eyes widened. “Oh, yes, I see what you mean. The mother. Well, you can always send word to her once the child is safe on English soil. She probably is not complicit in any of this, but her judgment in taking up with this Lezennes character is questionable at best.”
Geoff said nothing, but he could not deny the same thought had crossed his mind. Her period of mourning was scarcely out. Could she really be contemplating marriage?
“I think it more likely the lady is near destitution,” he said pensively.
Miss de Rohan appeared to consider it. “All the more reason to reunite her with her English kin,” she said. “Whilst we’re away, have your Preost go dig up that family in Colchester—he’s the genealogist round here, is he not? And an ordained minister in the Church?”
“He is both, yes,” said Geoff.
Miss de Rohan flashed a mordant smile. “Well, in my experience, no one can slather on the guilt like a priest bent on finding redemption for some poor devil’s soul,” she said, “and Sutherland looks like he could get the job done.”
Geoff set his coffee cup down very carefully. “Well, Miss de Rohan, you seem to have it all worked out,” he murmured, “but you are missing one critical element.”
“And that would be?”
“An invitation.”
At last she had the good grace to blush.
But the truth was, he was going to invite her. She was impulsive, but she was not stupid. And she had summed him up pretty thoroughly. Moreover, the plan she had proposed was precisely what Rance would have done.
It was not, however, what he would have done.
He eyed her across the tea table. “Miss de Rohan, how old are you?”
She lifted her chin, her eyes faintly teasing. “How positively rude,” she said. “A lady never tells. But then, I just claimed not to be very much of a lady, didn’t I?”