“Simple. While I was in China, Quan helped me out of an unpleasant situation. As thank you, I offered him passage to France. He’s been with me ever since.”
Vivian doubted any of this was true. “What does he do for you?”
Kenswick shrugged. “A little bit of everything. Valet, coachman, tailor, tinker. He spent some time as a soldier, so he’s handy for protection. He’s my quartermaster, you could say. He runs the details in my life I don't want to meddle with. He orders my cravats, feeds the horses, and even fetches my secret invisible ink when I run out.” He said all of this with a cheeky grin that was all together too charming.
“You say a lot of nonsensical things.”
He shrugged again. “It’s part of my charm.”
“To be ridiculous?”
“To be amusing.”
Vivian pursed her lips, wondering what she had gotten herself into.
Mr. Quan was out the door with her trunk perched on his shoulder, though as he was the same height as Vivian, it seemed the trunk towered over both of them as he passed.
Her mother came out with a basket of freshly-baked breads, some butter, and the last store of jam from the previous year’s harvest.
“I know how you like your sweets,” Mother said, tucking the cloth back in place after Vivian had peeked inside. “And don’t tell me not to send it with you, because you know I will insist.”
“Before we leave, I should engage a lady's maid to travel with us,” Luke said.
Vivian dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “I’ve been without servants since the Abbey burned down, I can survive another couple of days without a maid. We can hire one in London.”
He looked at her askance. “But you need a chaperone.”
“Vivian can take care of herself,” her mother told him. “Just make sure you marry her before anyone finds out about this impropriety.” The basket was passed to Kenswick who went to place it inside the carriage.
Vivian grasped her mother’s hands in her own. “I can’t believe I’ve agreed to leave you here, all alone.”
“Nonsense,” Mother replied, smiling brightly, a front of stability. “I have my books. And the garden.”
“Consider Uncle Ducky’s invitation,” Vivian pleaded. “He and Celia would be thrilled to have you visit. At least until…” Vivian paused and swallowed down the emotion building in her throat. “Until I’ve returned.” When she and the earl reached the end of their agreement. When she didn’t have to pretend to be married to a stranger. In six months’ time Vivian would have everything she needed. A sizable income, the repairs done to the Abbey. Her mother would be secure and cared for. They wouldn’t need to hoard the last of the strawberry preserves ever again.
“I will consider visiting with Celia and Ducky,” Mother replied, but Vivian knew it was a lie. Ever since that night, since the fire that took her father’s life and marred her mother’s skin, she’d retreated from society. From the little family they had remaining.
“I will write to you every day,” Vivian promised.
Her mother laughed. “You will do no such thing. You will have other things to occupy your time, I am certain.” She glanced at something behind Vivian, and Vivian knew it was her new betrothed, likely ready to be done with this show of womanly emotion. Eager for their charade to begin. Promptly.
With more hugs and promises of letters, Vivian was closed inside the carriage, her betrothed on the opposite bench. And before Vivian could even process what was happening, she was rolling away from her childhood home, tucked up in a carriage with a stranger she’d agreed to marry.
The familiar trees and hills faded into something new, the sun pulling higher into the sky as they rolled along. Terror rolled through her, entwined with excitement, though often it was difficult to differentiate one emotion from the other. It all depended on the context. Even in the context of what she’d agreed to do, to save her mother, and save herself really, Vivian was not certain she’d made the right choice.
She blew at a lock of hair as it came loose from her hastily-done coiffure. They’d had to depart so early she’d dressed and pinned her hair up in the dark. It was no wonder it was falling out of place.
The earl, for his part, looked perfectly at ease. Leaning against the back cushion on the rear-facing bench, his arms were crossed, and he looked to have fallen back asleep.
“It’s rude to stare.” He didn’t open an eye or give any indication he was awake. He could have spoken in his sleep for all Vivian knew.
“I’m not staring.”
His mouth quirked up to one side.
Vivian pursed her lips and looked out the window.
She had not been staring.
All right, she had a bit. But it was rather difficult not to stare. The man was too handsome for his own good.
“You can stare.” He tightened the hold of his arms and snuggled into the bench further. “I don’t mind.”
“I mind,” Vivian said under her breath.
The earl smirked, his eyes still closed, which was just as well as the gaze of his lavender eyes was unnerving. What sort of deity would bestow such a delicate color of blue on such a powerful man?
“Kenswick, please understand—”
“Gads, please do not call me that,” the earl said with a grimace.
Vivian’s brow furrowed. “Have you something else I should call you? Kenny, perhaps?”
“No,” he said a little more vehemently than she felt was necessary. “That’s even worse. My name is Luke, and that will do.”
“I am not certain it is proper for me to call you by your Christian name, even if we are to be married. I do not think I ever heard my mother call my father Peter.”
He still had not opened his eyes.
“As I have said repeatedly, I am not your father, and you are not your mother. In private and when we are with friends and family, I should like you to call me Luke. I intend to call you Vivian.”
Vivian shook her head. “I do not think I could do it.”
He pushed himself to a sitting position then, giving up on obtaining any sleep.
“And I do not think I could be the only person in my family with a spouse who addresses him by his title,” he countered, pinning her with his stare. “It would seem awfully… unfamiliar.”
“Your siblings do not call each other by their titles?”
Luke snickered. “Hardly. There is a rather quaint ‘no-titles’ rule when amongst family.”
Vivian shook her head again in disbelief. “I do not think I could call the Duchess of Bradstone by anything other than ‘your grace.’ It would be so painfully forward of me.”
“The rest of us call her Duchess Clara, if that is better?”
Vivian leveled an incredulous glare at him, and he laughed. “Call them whatever you like, or whatever they ask you to call them. I promise you, in private, my family, despite all their lofty titles and positions in society and the government, are endearingly familiar with each other. The only time a title is used is to vex the other person.”
“That is the opposite of how I was raised,” Vivian replied, glancing out the window again. “And if you will not permit me to call you Kenswick, I shall simply use ‘my lord’ in place of any address.”
Luke groaned. “You are proving to be a terribly vexing woman, you know.”
Vivian’s lips quirked. “I’ve been told that before.”
He grinned at her. “You don’t like me.”
“I don’t like what you stand for. I’m indifferent to you personally.”
“I’m not all that bad once you get to know me.”
“I’m sure you are quite pleasant,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “People probably find you charming and fawn over your every word. You family probably loves you dearly and thinks you are the life of the party. You said your brother was a duke? He was likely thrilled when you were given Kenswick because that would certainly put an end to the aimless life you and all younger born sons are pr
ivileged to enjoy, and you might finally take something seriously, for once in your life. They’re all probably so very proud, and relieved you have a newfound direction in life.”
Luke watched her tirade with a glint of humor reflecting in his eyes, and he shrugged. “Probably something like that.”
“And yet, it doesn’t seem to have worked.”
“I’m here, ready to wed you, am I not? Doesn’t that indicate I’m to take something seriously?”
Vivian shook her head. “Not really. You’re in need of a wife to give the appearance of taking Kenswick seriously. You’ve no intention of actually doing it.”
Luke shrugged again. “Same difference.”
Vivian watched him, her mind trying to figure him out. What could be so important that he needed to pretend to enact his earldom in nothing more than name?
“What did you do before you were Kenswick?”
“I worked with the Foreign Office.”
“You said you were at Waterloo?”
“I was in the vicinity but tending to other things.”
Vivian’s brow furrowed. “What was more important than the war?”
Luke turned his head to pin her gaze beneath his own. “There are more ways to serve the needs of your country than engaging in battle.”
“You chose diplomacy over soldiering?”
“For a time, I was a Royal Marine,” he admitted, looking back out the window. “Life on a ship wasn’t for me, as it turns out. When I was looking for something else, something else found me instead.”
“The Foreign Office?”
He nodded. “It gave me the ability to contribute in a different capacity. And I’d like to return to that. Rotting on my arse in Parliament isn’t what I had in mind.”
Vivian could understand where he was coming from and she felt a tad sorry for him.
A tad, she reaffirmed to herself. She wasn’t growing soft on him or anything silly.
“My brother felt the same way. Lancelot. He went off and joined the army and died on the Peninsula. Percival did as well.”
His brows pulled together. “You had a brother named Lancelot and another named Percival?”
Vivian nodded. It wasn’t the first time someone had commented on the unfortunate theme to her siblings’ names. “Mother was obsessed with Arthurian legends.”
Luke blanched. “How far did her obsession go?”
“My brothers were Bedivere, Owain, Lancelot, and Percival.”
“Why were you not Guinevere?” he asked.
“Mother thought it was too many letters to have to spell throughout my life,” Vivian explained. “So, I was christened Vivian, the lady—”
“The lady of the lake,” Luke finished with a nod. “Yes, my education included that classic.”
“It’s like our family bible,” Vivian continued, wondering why she was divulging such a ridiculous family tidbit. Even as they rolled away from the Abbey, she felt the distance tighten around her heart. “Mother used to tell me my Arthur would find me one day and I would be whisked off to my happily ever after.”
Luke’s lips twitched. “Did she now? That’s a nice sentiment.”
Vivian sighed. “Truth be told, I’d have rather been the knight than the damsel in distress. My father was a soldier in the war with America. He taught my brothers all sorts of things and I wiggled my way into lessons. It was mostly games and silliness. We all heard the grand legends of Merlin and Arthur and his knights. Each of my brothers joined up with Wellington as soon as they were old enough, and went off to live their own adventures.”
“I am sorry for the losses you endured.”
“It was some years ago. They didn’t want to stay and be farmers or solicitors or whatever else my mother wanted them to do.”
Luke nodded but didn’t comment and it seemed to be an end to their conversation. Their moment of intimacy fell flat with such a blatant dismissal.
Such a maddening man. Ridiculous to a fault with a troubling undercurrent of seriousness. He was a walking contradiction. Vivian didn’t like it one bit.
They sat in silence for hours. At some point Luke fell asleep; at the very least he was a quiet sleeper, though his long form did seem to take up most of the carriage.
Vivian did her best to ignore him, not wanting to think about how his pantaloons clung to well-sculpted thighs, or how his jacket fit his shoulders rather perfectly.
It bothered Vivian on a deep subliminal level that everything about the man seemed perfect. A face a Greek master would have wept to sculpt. His cheeky grin that she was certain could grant him anything. The way one dimple peeked out when he was truly amused.
His easy-going nature was simply too easy. Everything about him was just too easy. He couldn’t possibly be this perfect.
She looked away, tears brimming in her eyes as the impact of what she’d agreed to began to hit her. She’d agreed to marry a stranger, who had swept her off in a fine carriage, but how was she to know this would work? What if he turned out to be a madman? Or worse, boring.
Vivian couldn’t breathe, and the confines of the carriage suddenly felt suffocating.
She tapped on the carriage roof and felt their movement slow to a halt.
She flipped the latch on the door and escaped the carriage before Mr. Quan had a chance to offer assistance.
This would not do. She’d agreed to the arrangement. She would not go back on her word. Even if it was a miserable six months, it would be worth it in the end.
Vivian turned to stare determinedly at the open carriage door. Mr. Quan was on the ground, watching her with perceptive eyes. He said something to her in what she guessed was Chinese. Vivian did not understand his words, but she understood the concern in his tone.
“I am all right, Mr. Quan. I just needed some fresh air.”
He said something else and glanced at Luke asleep in the carriage.
“It is partially his fault,” Vivian continued, though she didn’t know if he was understanding her. “He brought this all upon me in such a whirlwind, I’ve barely had time to process anything. I was simply momentarily overwhelmed.”
Mr. Quan moved to the carriage and pulled something out from inside. Turning, he handed her a round wooden canteen painted in a faded blue.
Vivian took it lightly, staring at the canteen in surprise. “My brother Lancelot had one like this, before he left for the war. He was annoyed with me because I painted flowers all over it. He said he would never live it down, but I think he appreciated having something silly like that with him. Something from home.”
Mr. Quan smiled and nodded towards the canteen.
Vivian uncapped it. “Is it spirits?”
Mr. Quan laughed and shook his head, mimicking taking a drink.
Before she could decide, they were both distracted by the sounds of approaching hooves, and two riders appeared around the bend in the road. They did not slow as they approached, and stopped quickly between the carriage and where Vivian stood with Mr. Quan.
A cloud of dust puffed around them and Vivian coughed. Mr. Quan stepped in front of Vivian and turned towards the two assailants.
“Well, this looks to be our day!” one of the men said. As the dust cleared, Vivian realized they’d both pulled handkerchiefs up over their noses. They dismounted quickly, brandishing pistols.
Irritation overtook any fear she might have had. “I beg your pardon! What is the meaning of this?”
“This is a highway robbery,” one of the men said.
Vivian frowned and crossed her arms. “Well, that simply will not do. I do not give you permission to rob me.”
The other man waved a pistol at her. “We dinna care about permission, miss.”
She pretended the gun wasn’t even there, focusing on chastising him to cover any trace of fear. It wasn’t the first time she’d been around weapons.
She popped her hands on her hips. “I dinna care if you care or not! I refuse to be robbed.”
The first man stuck his h
ead in the carriage door.
“Drunk as a skunk I am afraid,” Vivian called to him. “And spent all his blunt on drink this morning. Stupid fellow. I assure you, there isn’t anything to rob in there.”
The two men glanced between themselves again.
“This carriage looks awfully fine,” the first man said. “Who is that man inside?”
“Oh, yes, terribly sorry.” Vivian made of show of curtsying. “I am Miss Vivian Burke, and that is my brother Lancelot Burke. This is our driver, Mr. Quan. He is conveying us to Bath to meet his employer. My brother is the Earl of Kenswick’s secretary, and I am to be a companion to our elderly aunt.”
The second man had crossed to peer into the carriage. “He doesn’t look like your brother.”
“Yes, and that is obvious when we are all together. No one knows where his dark curls came from, as both our parents are ginger as I am.” Vivian shrugged for dramatic effect. “Mother insisted Father is his father.”
The second man waved his pistol again. “I dinna care if—”
Mr. Quan shifted his weight as he slowly moved his hand, as if he were reaching for a pistol. Vivian had no indication he was armed, but they did not need more guns brought into the situation. She caught his eye and gave a tiny shake of her head. Mr. Quan held her gaze for a moment before lowering his hand.
It grated that her husband-to-be would sleep through such a thing. She’d thought him a spoiled, indulgent, useless lord, and now she was becoming more certain of her initial assumptions. How would she survive six months’ married to the man?
With a forced cheerfulness, in direct contrast to the direction of her thoughts, Vivian turned towards their assailants and asked, “I’m so sorry, but I did not catch your names? It would be lovely if we could remain civil.”
“You don’t need to know our names,” the second man said.
Vivian smiled sweetly. “If you insist. Might we be on our way? I am afraid there is not a thing to rob us of.”
“We could take your carriage,” the first man suggested.
“You are welcome to it if you can move my oaf of a brother from the interior. It’s doubtful he would wake for some time, and when he comes to, he’s likely to be in an alcoholic rage.”
The Spy’s Convenient Bride: The Macalisters, Book Five Page 5