by Emily Larkin
It seemed she told the truth: her lips pressed together and her eyebrows pinched into another frown. The frown faded as he watched. “I don’t like being cross,” she said, with that same matter-of-factness. “So I should like to fix this.” Her lips turned up in a smile. “What do you say?”
His own anger wasn’t so easy to relinquish. He frowned at her. “Are you in the habit of taking beaux?”
“No,” she said, apparently unruffled by his disapproval. “But given the circumstances, I’m prepared to make an exception. It will only be for a week, two at the most.”
“No one would believe it,” Nicholas said flatly.
Her eyebrows rose. “Why not?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, madam, I’m somewhat disfigured.” There was a bitter edge to his words he hadn’t intended.
Her gaze shifted to his cheek. Her brow furrowed again, faintly.
Nicholas gritted his teeth. He knew what she saw; he’d seen it often enough in the mirror: the thick ridges of scar tissue, the melted skin.
“It’s not important,” Lady Isabella said.
She meant it. He heard the truth in her voice.
Nicholas almost missed a step. He cleared his throat again. “Madam—”
“I’m an eccentric,” Lady Isabella said. “If I choose you as my beau, London will believe it.” She smiled at him, golden and beautiful. “Now, how shall we go about it? Two dances tonight, and then . . . tomorrow I shall meet you in Hyde Park and take you up in my phaeton. Are you free in the afternoon, Major?”
He eyed her circumspectly.
“Well, Major Reynolds?”
He turned her offer over in his mind. As a charade it had its appeals. Playing beau to a woman as lovely as Lady Isabella, driving in Hyde Park with her, dancing . . . “Yes,” he said, feeling almost cheerful.
“Five o’clock in the park,” Lady Isabella said as the waltz ended. “By the Stanhope Gate.”
Nicholas’s ill-humor returned as he escorted her from the dance floor. His ears heard the word ogre, half-whispered, to his right.
Lady Isabella heard it, too. He saw her bite her lower lip. She glanced at him.
Nicholas smiled tightly. If I knew to whom I owe that name, I’d make them sorry.
The candles in the chandeliers seemed to burn brighter for a moment. The crystal drops glittered, as sharp-edged as shards of glass. Nicholas inhaled, smelling the mingled scents of perfume and perspiration, and beneath them something darker: his own anger. Determination solidified inside him. He’d find out. It couldn’t be impossible. Someone must know. Ladies always talked among themselves. Perhaps Gussie knew, or even Lady Isabella . . .
Nicholas looked at his companion with renewed interest. “Lady Isabella?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know to whom I owe my sobriquet?” He tried to speak as lightly as he could, to hide the anger in his voice, but she must have heard it. Her cheeks flushed faintly. She opened her fan.
“Why do you wish to know, Major Reynolds?”
He shrugged. “It’s useful to know one’s enemies.”
“Enemies?” She glanced at him quickly. “I’m certain there was no malice intended, Major. Indeed, you must not think it!”
Nicholas’s interest sharpened. “You know who it was?”
Lady Isabella fingered the delicate ivory sticks of her fan. She didn’t meet his eyes. “I believe . . . it came from the lady who is sheltering Miss Durham.”
Harriet’s kind benefactress. Anger flared in his belly.
Lady Isabella glanced up at him. “I’m certain it wasn’t ill-meant, Major Reynolds. It was foolishness, nothing more. Pray, don’t think about it!”
He smiled, tightly. “I assure you, madam, I shan’t.” He wouldn’t think; he’d do. He’d find Harriet’s benefactress, and when he did . . .
He’d teach her a lesson.
Chapter Five
Isabella took a deep breath as the phaeton entered Hyde Park beneath the arch of the Stanhope Gate. Be calm. Be confident. But it was hard to be either calm or confident when she was this nervous.
She glanced down at Rufus. He, at least, was enjoying himself. He sat up, alert, his tongue hanging out and his ears pricked. His tail wagged, stirring the vandyked hem of her carriage dress.
Isabella took another deep breath. She squared her shoulders and scanned the thoroughfare. Curricles and a barouche, gentlemen on horseback, ladies walking—fashionable London had turned out to see and be seen. Where are you, Major Reynolds?
Despite the nerves, her conscience was easier. This was something she had to do. Her penance, if it could be called that. Not for sheltering Harriet—she had no qualms about her rôle as protector—but for her disastrous slip of the tongue last night.
Her fingers tightened on the reins. There he is.
The major stood to one side of the drive, looking towards the Serpentine and the trees of Kensington Gardens. Isabella observed him as she slowed the horses. He wore a gentleman’s clothes—tailcoat and breeches and top boots—but even so he looked like a soldier. His attitude was alert as he waited, watchful and unsmiling.
Her opinion was the same as it had been last night: A dangerous man. He stood quietly and yet there was something hard-edged about his figure, his face. She had no difficulty believing that he had killed.
In profile the scar wasn’t visible. The lines of his face—brow and cheekbone, nose and jaw—were strong. He was attractive—and then he turned his head, showing her his left cheek. The scar was vivid on his face, almost shocking. Something tightened inside her, a tiny recoil at the pain that scar represented.
Isabella lifted her chin and fixed a smile on her face. “Major Reynolds.” She brought the horses to a halt. “Fancy meeting you here.”
His lips twitched. “Yes,” he said. “Fancy that.”
Some of Isabella’s tension eased. Her smile felt more natural. “Shall we take a turn around the park together?”
The major bowed, with none of a dandy’s flourishes. Very much a soldier, she thought. “I would be delighted,” he said.
Her groom jumped down and Major Reynolds climbed up into the phaeton. Rufus, true to his mongrel origins, wasn’t fastidious when it came to new acquaintances. He welcomed the major eagerly and tried to lick his face.
“Not quite a lapdog,” the major said.
Isabella looked at Rufus’s long legs and unruly tail. “Not quite.” She brought the horses to a walk again. “Tell me, Major, did you receive an invitation to the Harringtons’ ball tonight?”
“Yes,” he said, rubbing one of Rufus’s ears. “But I hadn’t thought to go.” He glanced at her. His expression became wry. “I take it I’m attending?”
“Yes,” said Isabella. “We shall dance the first waltz and the closing dance.”
The major stopped rubbing Rufus’s ear. He sat back and observed her. “The closing dance?”
“Yes.” Isabella said. So that you can’t leave early.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
Isabella smiled. “And you may take me to supper, Major.”
Major Reynolds observed her a few seconds longer, and then said with the utmost politeness, “It will be my pleasure, Lady Isabella.”
That cold, green gaze was oddly intimidating. Isabella cleared her throat. “And tomorrow is Wednesday, which means Almack’s.”
An expression of dismay briefly crossed the major’s face. “Must I—”
“Yes.”
Major Reynolds observed her for a moment. The set of his jaw was almost grim. “Very well.”
Isabella transferred her attention to the horses. “Which dances would you like? A waltz and—”
“Two waltzes,” the major said firmly.
She glanced at him, startled. “Two?”
“If I’m to endure Almack’s, then it must be two waltzes.”
“Oh.” She was suddenly—disconcertingly—aware of him as a man. The broad, strong hands, the muscled length of his thigh,
the sheer size of him as he sat alongside her. She swallowed and looked away. “Now, we must meet as many people as possible,” she said briskly. “Do you see anyone you know? Oh, Lady Cowper! Are you ready, Major?”
An hour later, her jaw ached from smiling. Rufus lay across the major’s boots, asleep. “I think that’s enough for one day,” Isabella said.
“More than enough,” the major said dryly.
It was draining to be the object of so much attention. But the first step was now behind them, and in a few hours they’d take the second. By midnight London would be talking about Major Reynolds, and not merely to call him an ogre.
“We’ll do this again tomorrow,” Isabella said, trying to sound cheerful. My penance.
“If you think it necessary, Lady Isabella.” There was no inflection in the major’s voice.
She glanced at him. He had to have enjoyed the polite, meaningless conversations and the bright-eyed curiosity even less than she had.
“Yes,” she said firmly. It was necessary. I won’t have you laughed at because of me. She bit her lip, wishing she could apologize, but his face made it impossible: the hardness at his mouth, the hardness in his eyes. “I wish to be of assistance, Major.” It was the closest she could come to an apology. “If there’s any way that I can help you in this matter, please inform me.”
Major Reynolds looked at her for a few seconds, and then seemed to come to an abrupt decision. “There is one thing, Lady Isabella.”
“Oh?”
“If you should discover the whereabouts of Miss Durham’s benefactress, I would be pleased to know it.” His voice was light, but his eyes . . .
Cold. Angry.
Isabella swallowed.
“You may put me down here,” the major said.
Isabella obeyed automatically, reining in the horses. Her mouth was dry. Don’t panic. She moistened her lips. “Why do you wish to know?”
“I’d like to make her acquaintance.”
“Why, Major?”
Major Reynolds touched the scar on his cheek. “She coined my new name, did she not?”
Isabella bit her lip. She nodded.
“Then I should like to meet her.” He lowered his hand. Anger glittered in his eyes. “Do you know who she is?”
Isabella’s heart gave a panicked thump in her chest. She stared at Major Reynolds, at the hard-edged face and bright, angry eyes, and found herself unable to tell the truth. She moistened her lips, found her voice, and said, “No.”
Major Reynolds accepted this with a nod.
Isabella felt a rush of shame, but there was no way she could tell him the truth. Not now. Not when he was looking so angry, so dangerous.
Major Reynolds leapt lightly down from the phaeton. He looked up at her, his eyes narrowed against the sun. “Thank you for your company, Lady Isabella.”
She attempted a smile. “It’s been a pleasure, Major.”
The major bowed. “Good day, ma’am.”
Isabella watched him go. I lied to him. But the shame she felt was eclipsed by another emotion: panic. She had the sensation that she couldn’t breathe. Fear prickled over her skin.
Major Reynolds was hunting her.
The first thing Isabella did when she set foot in her house on Clarges Street was to send for her man of business; the second was to speak with her cousin.
Mrs. Westin was in her parlor, a comfortable room with walls of pale green and a white marble fireplace. Sèvres china adorned the mantelpiece: bowls and cachepots and a particularly fine vase gilded with chinoiserie decoration. Figurines perched on side tables and peered from the glass-fronted mahogany cabinet, looking at her with tiny, painted eyes.
Mrs. Westin was engaged in her favorite occupation: knitting for the poor. Harriet sat on a chair alongside her, reading aloud from what Isabella recognized as An Improving Work. Mrs. Westin, while never deprecating Isabella’s preference for novels, refused to read such books herself.
Harriet looked up. “Lady Isabella!” She put the book aside, rose, and curtsied. Her expression was shyly adoring.
Isabella forced a smile. “Hello, my dear. Would you be so kind as to give me a moment alone with my cousin?”
She waited until the door had shut behind Harriet before turning to her cousin. “Elinor . . .”
Mrs. Westin had laid down her knitting. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and an expression of mild enquiry in her faded blue eyes. “Yes, my dear?”
“Elinor, I have come to ask you . . .” Isabella felt heat rise in her cheeks. She turned away and walked to stand at the window, kneading her hands together.
“Is everything quite all right, my dear?”
“Oh, yes! That is to say . . .” She turned resolutely back to face her cousin. “Major Reynolds has it in his head to find me.”
Mrs. Westin’s brow creased. “Find you? But I thought you were meeting him in Hyde Park today? Although I can’t see why it’s your responsibility to stop London laughing at him. It has nothing to do with you!”
Isabella found herself unable to meet her cousin’s eyes—or make a full confession. “You misunderstand me, Elinor,” she said, looking down at her clasped hands, shame burning in her cheeks. “Major Reynolds means to discover where Harriet is staying. And . . . and he’s very angry!”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Westin. “Oh, dear.”
“He will be much in my company the next week or so, and . . . and it’s possible you’ll meet him, and . . .” She glanced up, twisting her hands together. “I have come to beg you to . . . to not tell him that Harriet is here, even if he should ask you.”
Mrs. Westin’s expression became one of gentle reproach. “Thou shalt not lie, my dear Isabella,” she said in her soft voice. “The good Lord commands it of us.”
Isabella’s cheeks grew hotter. “I know,” she said “But . . . but could you please not tell him that it is I who—”
“If Major Reynolds should ask me,” Mrs. Westin said, picking up her knitting again, “I shall tell him that I pay no attention to gossip. That is the truth.”
Isabella released the breath she’d been holding. “Thank you, dearest Elinor.”
“You did quite right to rescue that poor child,” her cousin said, setting neat stitches of gray wool. “But I should have thought you would have returned her to her grandfather. Surely he wouldn’t have been so hard-hearted as to turn her away? However, I’m sure you did what you thought was right.”
Isabella bit her lip.
“I own, I can’t like the subterfuge. There’s something distasteful about it.”
Isabella agreed. Extremely distasteful. She’d not thought it would be when she’d so blithely offered Harriet sanctuary. But the skirting around the truth last night, the lie she had uttered today, the begging of her cousin’s complicity . . .
Abhorrent, that’s what it is.
“And it must be said that Harriet should not have run away.” Mrs. Westin glanced up from her knitting. “One must always do one’s duty to one’s family, however unpleasant it may be.”
Isabella opened her mouth to disagree—Surely not an unhappy marriage!—and then prudently closed it. Duty was the tenet Mrs. Westin lived by; she continued to wear black for a husband she had neither loved nor liked.
“However, what’s done is done, and we must make the best of it.”
“Yes.” Isabella managed a smile. “Indeed we must.”
The interview with her cousin over, she hurried downstairs, but her man of business hadn’t yet arrived. After a moment’s indecision Isabella climbed the stairs again and sat purposefully down at the pianoforte. She turned the sheets of music, looking for the latest piece she’d purchased. Sonata no. 14, by Beethoven. She blew out a breath and sat still for a moment, her hands poised above the keys. Calm. Then she began to play.
The first movement was soft, almost a lamentation, but the music came jerkily from her fingertips, choppy and disjointed. After a few minutes her ears could bear it no longer. Isabella p
ushed back the thimble-footed piano stool and went downstairs again, where she refrained from opening the front door and peering out into the street. Instead, she paced in the library while Rufus watched from the rug before the fireplace. The walnut mantle clock ticked the minutes away on its gilded face. Half an hour passed before the butler announced Mr. Tremaine’s arrival.
He bowed and advanced across the floor towards her. “Good evening, Lady Isabella. I understand you have urgent business for me?”
Mr. Tremaine was a stocky man with a square, blunt face and an air of solidity. The sight of him should have calmed her. It didn’t. Mr. Tremaine was no match for Major Reynolds.
Isabella tried to smile. “I need you to go to Stony Stratford, to an inn called the Rose and Crown.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes,” she said. “As soon as possible.”
“And my task, ma’am?”
“You must speak with the landlady. A Mrs. Botham.” She turned and walked to the fireplace. The clock kept time on the mantelpiece, tick tick tick. “I stayed there three nights ago on my way back from Derbyshire. While I was there I made the acquaintance of a young lady. A Miss Harriet Durham.” She glanced at Mr. Tremaine. “I need you to ensure that my name cannot be connected with hers. Either she was not there, or I was not there. I don’t care which.”
“You wish me to, er . . . pay Mrs. Botham?”
“Yes,” Isabella said, aware that she was flushing. “You may draw upon my funds. I shall leave the sum up to you.”
Mr. Tremaine bowed. “Very well, ma’am. I’ll depart immediately.”
Isabella bit her lip as she watched the door close behind him. First I lie, and now I bribe. She looked down at her hands. They were clenched tightly together.
She released them and blew out a breath. A glance at the clock showed that it was time to prepare for the Harringtons’ ball. Two dances with Major Reynolds, and supper.
Isabella squared her shoulders. “I am not afraid of him,” she told Rufus, but deep inside herself she knew it for another lie. Major Reynolds would be a formidable enemy. If he ever discovered her rôle in this . . .
Fear shivered over her skin.