A Reckless Beauty (24 page)

He looked on as Fanny said her farewells to everyone in turn, kissing Callie on both cheeks, lingering in front of Mariah as that woman spoke quietly to her, and then being detained again when Eleanor made her sit beside her for a few minutes, Fanny’s expression becoming increasingly mulish.

“What do you suppose your wife is saying to Fanny that’s put that scowl on her face?” Valentine asked Jack.

“I believe she’s reminding her that she is now in charge of your exalted household, God help you. Fanny knows as much about running a household as I do, I’m afraid. Ah, look. Eleanor’s handing Fanny some books. Probably having to do with proper deportment in society, as well as how often to order the sheets changed and the silver polished.”

“Yes, and Fanny’s taking the books with all the cheer of a person being handed a basket filled to overflowing with spiders. She really knows nothing of the domestic arts?”

“Fanny? She knows how to ride. To shoot. She’s actually fairly competent with fencing foils. Ainsley seems to believe that a person should be allowed to excel at the things that most interest them. With Fanny, that meant she was interested in anything that interested Rian. I know Fanny’s very much a female, Valentine, but she was fairly well-equipped to follow Rian to Brussels. I doubt, however, she could find her way to the linen cupboards here at Becket Hall. I hope you have a competent housekeeper in place at Brede Manor.”

Brede attempted to think of his bride frowning over the decisions of daily menus, even of her sitting quietly in a sunny parlor, working a needlepoint pattern into some slippers she’d then force on him as a Christmas present. Both were difficult pictures to hold in his mind, and he dismissed them with relief. “I didn’t marry Fanny so that she could run herd on my servants.”

“No, of course you didn’t. You married her for the same reason I married Eleanor. Humbling, isn’t it, to suddenly realize that you’ve lived perhaps half your life without realizing how empty that life was, until a smile, a certain tilt of the head, a particular voice, turns that empty world like a…well, like a bucket suddenly righted, so that it can begin to fill.”

“You’ve always had such a way with words, Jack, old friend,” Valentine said as he watched Fanny hug Ainsley, hold on tight. “First we’re men—and then we’re empty buckets?”

Jack grinned, embarrassed. “Perhaps I should attempt to put that some other way….”

“Please, old friend, I beg you, we’ll leave it at empty buckets. So yours is full now?”

“Overflowing. Eleanor agreed I could tell you, although we won’t say anything to anyone else for some time, as this has happened once before, and quickly came to nothing. It would seem I’m to become a father late this year.”

“Well, now, my congratulations to you, Jack,” Valentine said, truly pleased for his friend, although, putting himself in Jack’s shoes for a moment, no more than the mere the idea of starting his own nursery terrified him. Children of the house of Brede had not enjoyed happy childhoods, at least not in his generation. Would he do better with his own children? He couldn’t imagine Fanny counting linens, but he could imagine her holding their child….

“Yes, thank you. But remember, Eleanor doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“A difficult secret to keep, I’d imagine,” Valentine said, smiling.

“Here? It’s difficult to keep any secret at Becket Hall. I could sneeze in the bowels of the cellars, and at least three people would somehow be close enough to say ‘bless you.’ Not that I’d be anywhere else. How long will you be gone?”

“You assume I’m coming back?”

Jack nodded. “I know you’ll be back. You’re as hot to bring Beales down as the rest of us. That’s obvious. Because of Fanny. Definitely because of Rian. It wasn’t your failure, you know. I put Rian in the best hands I could think of, but no one could have foreseen what happened. What happened was Beales. I saw him, you know, in London.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Valentine said, watching Fanny try to return the books to Eleanor, who laughed and pushed them back at her. “Tell me.”

Jack explained that he’d only seen a glimpse of the man as he entered a coach, and described him as tall, thin, dark. The identification was confirmed by Chance, who’d located one of the man’s servants, who had told him that the man chewed leaves. “Coca leaves, Valentine. A habit picked up in the islands, Ainsley tells me. At any rate, he was using the name Nathaniel Beatty.”

Valentine turned his head sharply to look at his friend, and then motioned for Jack to follow him into the hallway.

“What’s the matter, Valentine? You’ve heard the name?”

“I
dined
with the man,” Valentine said, rubbing at the back of his neck, trying to recall the time, the place. “When I was in attendance at the Congress of Vienna earlier this year? Yes, that’s got to be it. I remember now. He was introduced to the rest of us at the table as—let me think a moment—as a financier, by Charles Talleyrand. Pardon me, by the just newly created
Prince
de Talleyrand, much to his delight.”

Jack was impressed. “Talleyrand? The man Bonaparte said would sell his own father for profit? We should have realized Beales would cultivate a man like that, one who knows how to play both sides of the fence, and take profit from each side. Ainsley’s said more than once that Beales always goes with the winners. This is important, Valentine. We have to tell him immediately.”

“You tell him,” Valentine said as Fanny walked out into the hallway, clearly having lost the battle of the books. “I’m taking my wife home.” He then turned to Fanny, smiling as he held out his hand to her. “Don’t you look scholarly, sweetings. Are you ready to leave? As it is, we’ll be stopping at an inn for at least the one night, if we don’t want to push the horses.”

Fanny pulled a face. “It was as if they couldn’t wait to see me go,” she told him, taking the bonnet one of the maids had left on the foyer table for her, but leaving the shawl. Or she would have, if Valentine hadn’t picked it up and settled it over her shoulders. “I wanted to ride Molly, you know.”

“Tomorrow, sweetings. For now, let’s just be on our way.”

Fanny kissed Jack goodbye, turned in a full circle, giving Becket Hall one last look, as if she was leaving it forever, and then stepped out onto the stone porch and looked down the steps. “Odette! I was wondering where you were. I would have come looking for you, to say goodbye, except that this
bear
behind me keeps pushing me out the door.”

The older woman waited for Fanny to join her, hug her. She gently pushed Fanny away from her then and traced a small cross on her forehead with the pad of her thumb. “Behave.”

Fanny’s jaw dropped. “Odette! That’s all you can say to me?”

Odette’s wide smile showed nearly all of her large, white teeth. “Even that, child, is a mountain you won’t find easy to climb.”

“Odette, it has been an unique pleasure,” Valentine said after speaking to the coachman and joining Fanny. “Ready, sweetings?”

Before she could answer, Valentine had opened the door to the coach and lifted her up into it, not bothering to first lower the steps, and followed her inside, sitting himself beside her on the front-facing seat.

The coach moved off as Valentine slipped his arm behind Fanny’s shoulders, and before she could even think what he was doing, he was kissing her, long and hard.

All her protests, all her planned list of complaints, melted from her mind as she lifted her arm up and around his neck, pulling him even closer to her. She sighed into his mouth as he cupped her breast in his palm, dragged his thumb lightly across her nipple through the thin material of her gown.

He took her mouth, again and again, teasing her with his tongue, smiling against her lips as she dueled back at him.

And then he put her from him and turned front on the velvet squabs, his fingers interlaced in his lap.

“What…what do you think you’re doing? Did? Brede?”

“What was
necessary,
sweetings,” he told her, snaking out his long legs so that his heels rested on the facing seat as he slid lower on his spine, making himself as comfortable as a man can be when he really would like to have his wife sitting on him, rocking back and forth with the motion of the well-sprung coach.

But, no, he couldn’t think of that. It was bad enough what he’d done, without thinking of what he wished to do. What he had to do now was control his breathing, his heart rate, his urge to pull Fanny across his waist and undo all the cunning front buttons of her gown.

“Necessary? That again?
Why
was it necessary?”

He turned his head to smile at her. Wickedly. “You’ll understand soon enough, sweetings, I hope. Let me just say that some things improve, become more enjoyable, with practice. I spoke to the coachman, and we’ll be making our first stop our final stop for the night.”

Fanny looked away from him, pretending a concentration on the flat, unchanging view outside the off-window, until she thought she understood what he meant.

Then she turned back to him…and punched him in the stomach.

“Sorry, Brede. It was just…
necessary.
”

She sat back against the squabs, her arms folded, and with a smile on her face that didn’t fade for at least another mile, remembered what Mariah had whispered to her: “Remember, Fanny—he’s just as nervous about your new, shared situation as you are, just as vulnerable to hurt. Men only hide their feelings better, your husband probably better than most. It’s up to you to make him trust you enough to be honest with you…and with himself.”

Punching her husband in the stomach probably wasn’t what Mariah had in mind.

But did she want him to be honest with her? Yes, she did. Did she want him to have feelings for her? Yes, she did. Did she have…feelings for him?

Yes, she did.

Fanny blinked back unexpected tears. She’d been looking through the window too long, without blinking in the unusually bright sun of a late June Romney Marsh afternoon. That had to be the reason.

“Brede?” she said, still looking at the scenery that never changed, except for number of sheep in any given field.

“No, don’t apologize, Fanny,” he said, just happy that she was speaking to him again. Jack, anyone of his acquaintance, would double over in laughter if they knew how clumsy and disconcerted this one young woman, his wife, could make him. “I gave in to impulse. You live in a very crowded house, you know, even if it’s quite large. This is the first I’ve been really alone with you since our arrival. I’m sorry.”

“You were alone with me last night,” she told him, stepping carefully into territory she hadn’t planned to visit again once she had awakened that morning to realize he was gone.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember much of last night, sweetings. The last thing I can recall, to my everlasting shame, is lying on the floor, giggling like the village idiot. I don’t even know how or when I managed to crawl onto the bed. I hesitate to ask—was I entirely obnoxious?”

Fanny looked down at her fingers as they twined together, white-knuckled, in her lap. “You don’t remember? You
really
don’t remember?”

Valentine’s heart skipped a beat, then lurched on. “What did I do? Did I…did I attempt to force myself on you?”

She shook her head rather violently. “No, of course not. You’re a gentleman.”

Valentine couldn’t help himself. He laughed out loud. “Hardly, sweetings. I may bear the trappings, but only do so with considerable difficulty. But I did behave myself?”

“You…you
said
some things,” Fanny began, and then shook her head again. “You were drunk, Brede.”

He watched as she removed her bonnet, shook out her hair that was still unfashionably short, although he admired the way it curled against her cheeks. “What did I say?”

She reached over and took his hand in both of hers, hoping the gesture would soften her words. “You were talking about all the friends you’ve lost to war, and how happy you are that it’s all finally over now. I…I may have lost Rian, and that hurts so terribly, Brede. You lost so many more, so much more.”

Brede squeezed her hands. “Edward Pakenham in New Orleans. I’ll always miss him. The stupid loss of a good man in a bad battle. I’ve had three batmen serving me and all three were killed, so I stopped having them.” He looked at her, smiled. “Which explains my always impeccable attire in the field, doesn’t it? Ah, Fanny, so many gone yet again. Brunswick at Quatre Bras. Delancy, late in the day at Waterloo, and before we left Brussels I heard that Alexander Gordon had died of his wound. So many more. Too many more. I’m sorry if I was maudlin, as those who dive into bottles often are, I suppose.”

She didn’t tell him what else he’d said, how he’d hinted, more than hinted, that they should comfort each other, help each other be rid of the nightmares. But she knew she would always hold that thought close to her heart.

“I didn’t mind, Brede,” she said quietly, easing herself against him, resting her head on his shoulder as the coach continued on to their destination. “I didn’t mind….”

F
ANNY WOKE AS THE COACH
rocked to a stop, her eyes opening all at once when she realized she must have fallen asleep on Valentine’s shoulder within moments of resting her head against him.

He sensed the returning tenseness in her body and helped her right herself, for she was no longer propped against his shoulder, but lying with her head in his lap. He’d been stroking her hair, her soft cheek, for more than an hour, thinking random thoughts…those thoughts always returning to Fanny. His bride. His wife.

“I’m sorry, Brede,” Fanny apologized as she adjusted her shawl, avoided looking at him. “Why didn’t you wake me? Just push me off of you?”

“Onto the floor?” he asked her, and then watched, delighted, as a soft flush of color entered her cheeks. “I will say, Fanny, that when it comes to comfort, you’re vastly superior to a warm brick at my feet.”

“If that’s the case, and since I slept so well, I suppose I should say that you’re also very com—” She clamped her lips shut, knowing there was no way she could end that particular sentence with out stumbling over her own tongue, and turned to look out the window. She had to wake up, gather her wits about her, before she said anything else. Where, um, where are we?”

“I assure you, sweetings, I have absolutely no idea. I will say that either this coach is exceedingly well-sprung, or the roadways in Romney Marsh are well above the quality of those I’m more accustomed to enduring.”

Fanny was busy gathering up her bonnet and retying the strings, all while trying not to think about the coming evening, when she’d be alone with Valentine inside the small inn she could see through the window. “With good reason,” she said absently. “When we wish to move our loads inland, we can’t be worried about bogging down somewhere, so that we’re found by the Dragoons when the sun comes up, our wheels stuck in the mud. Oh!”

Valentine bit back a smile. “I already know everything, remember? Shall we?”

“I suppose so. I think I’m done blurting out damning information, at least for the moment. How long have I been asleep?”

“Two hours, I’d say. Why?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering about the
Spectre.
They’ll be making landfall at Ostend in a few more hours if the wind is fair, won’t they?”

“Are you upset that you and I didn’t go with them?”

She bit her lips together, shook her head. “No. I won’t do that again—cause anyone complications by being the lone female everyone seems to think themselves honor bound to protect, when they should be thinking of themselves. And they’ll find Rian and bring him home. I know they will.”

“Fanny, you can’t—”

“Please, Brede, don’t say anything else. I’m not going to give up on Rian. I can’t. If I’m being fanciful, at least allow me to deceive myself for as long as possible. It’s all I can do.”

“You can keep him in your heart, Fanny. He loved you very much,” Valentine said, seeing the tears as they gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“Thank you, Brede, for understanding. And now,” she said, forcing a smile to her face, “let’s feed you, shall we? As I recall, you haven’t eaten a single thing all day. I’m surprised you haven’t begun gnawing on the leather hand strap you’re still holding on to,” she said, waiting for him to open the door and let down the steps, and then taking his hand as he helped her to the ground.

She stood in the innyard as Valentine directed Jacob Whiting and the ostler who’d run out from the stables to have their baggage off-loaded before seeing to the horses, and then escorted Fanny into the small, dark hallway of
The Golden Fleece,
a misnomer if ever he’d encountered one.

But the landlord seemed duly impressed with their appearance, and when Jacob popped his head in the door to ask “milord” if there was anything else he needed, the landlord visibly straightened another inch and began bellowing for his wife to come take “her ladyship” to the private dining room while the best bedchamber was made up with fresh sheets.

Clearly, the “quality” didn’t make it a point to stop at
The Golden Fleece
with any regularity.

Fanny looked to Valentine, slightly bemused, and then realized that
she
was “her ladyship.” In point of fact, she was now the Countess of Brede. Goodness! She struggled to keep her expression blank—knowing
haughty
was too far above her limited reach—but when Valentine caught her eye, and winked at her, sharing in the joke, she had to hide her giggle with a cough.

“Would her ladyship be so pleased as to follow me?” the landlord’s plump, rosy-cheeked wife inquired nervously, dropping into a curtsey and then gesturing toward the rear of the hallway.

Fanny tipped her head slightly from side-to-side and grinned at Valentine. “Why, yes, I imagine her ladyship would like that very much, thank you,” she said, and brushed past her husband…who gave her a surreptitious pat on the backside to send her on her way.

By the time he’d joined her, Fanny had time to whisper in the landlady’s ear, be led to the rude but clean facilities, and return to the private dining room to find the table piled with bread, ham and cheese.

She pointed to the food as she chewed on a marvelous bite of sweet country ham, and watched as he sat down across the table from her. Neither of them said anything else until the landlord himself had served Valentine a mug of home-brewed beer and placed a pitcher of lemonade so fresh its tart aroma filled the air on the table for Fanny.

The man then quit the room, bowing himself out, his broad rump making contact with the doorjamb so that he had to step to his left before bowing one last time and closing the door.

Fanny swallowed the ham, choked on a giggle and motioned for Valentine to quickly pour some lemonade for her. She drank thirstily before using her serviette to wipe at her streaming eyes, and then finally sat back in her chair, neatly folding her hands on the edge of the tabletop. “Does this always happen?”

“Does what always happen, Fanny?” Valentine asked her, pretending not to understand the question.

She spread her hands. “You know—
that.
The…the bowing…the scraping. It’s rather embarrassing, don’t you think? Not for me, actually, as I’m rather enjoying it, but for people like our good innkeeper. I imagine he’s still bowing, out there somewhere.”

“Hmm, yes. Bowing, scraping, gleefully weighting our bill to suit what he believes is the size of my pocketbook. But you’re a countess now, sweetings. Laden with consequence. Positively
dripping
with it, actually, if I count the lemonade on your chin. Expected to behave as befits your station. Why, you’ll be presented to the Prince Regent when we travel to London for the season. Although that might be considered a dubious honor.”

After quickly dabbing at her chin with the serviette, Fanny picked up another slice of ham, took a bite out of it and then chewed on it thoughtfully, her elbow propped on the table.

“And you’ll be expected to use your fork,” Valentine added before taking a sip of his wine.

“I know how to use a fork,” Fanny told him, dropping the ham onto her plate and then sucking on her fingertips. “Elly gave us all lessons in deportment, etiquette at table, all of those dreary things. Repeatedly.”

“And books. She also gave you books.” The girl had all the makings of a minx, when she applied herself, and Valentine was fairly certain she was applying herself at the moment, deliberately shaking herself out of her doldrums. Really, he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years. “With all of that taken together, I can only suppose that you’re being deliberately
un
mannerly at the moment. Is there any special reason, or are you just being perverse?”

She lifted the fork, stabbed a piece of ham. “My family would be happy to tell you it’s the latter. Oh, all right, yes. Yes, there’s a special reason. I’m attempting to show you what a grave mistake you made, marrying me. I don’t know why I’m doing that, but I am. I’ll stop now. See? I’m even using the fork again.”

“Oh, don’t, not on my account. Or have you never read Fielding’s
Tom Jones,
and his recounting of Tom’s dinner with the delectable Mrs. Waters? Ah, you’re frowning, and I’m a lout to be speaking of such things with my lady wife.”

“Even if said lady wife doesn’t have the faintest idea what you’re saying?” Fanny asked, remembering Odette’s parting warning and deciding that she really should continue using her fork, as she’d made her point. “I’m really woefully stupid, you know. Nothing more than a simple country girl, a bumpkin. I’ll bore you to flinders within a week.”

“Or I could take on the role of mentor. We could sit together in the evenings, and I can read to you. I think you might like
Tom Jones.
I know I’d be interested in your reactions to the book.”

“I said I was stupid, Brede. I didn’t say I don’t know how to
read.
” Then she sighed, dramatically. “But I don’t paint, I don’t play the harp and I don’t sing. Oh, and I don’t sew. I’d go mad, if anyone asked me to do any of those things.”

Now it was Valentine who propped his elbow on the tabletop as he smiled at her. “Are you applying for the position of my wife, or attempting to talk me out of keeping you as my wife? All while remembering, sweetings, that we’re already very much married.”

“I know that, you poor thing. I’m simply warning you, Brede. It was one thing, in Brussels, or even at Becket Hall. But now you’re all but
dragging
me into your world, and you should be aware that I won’t fit. Lucie said I’m as suited for polite society as she is for penury, whatever she meant by that.”

“She meant, sweetings, that she doesn’t know how to be poor. And she doesn’t. What prompted her to say this to you, I wonder.”

Fanny broke off a bit of the fresh, crusty loaf and began breaking it apart with her fingers, popping small bits into her mouth. “When she refused to leave Wellington’s headquarters after you were so cutting to me, I threatened to stand up in the carriage and recite every vile word I know.”

Valentine coughed, dislodging a bit of ham from his throat, as he’d been swallowing as Fanny spoke. “And did you?”

“No,” she said, crumbling more of the bread. “But I did, at her request, recite those words to her later.”

“My stars,” Valentine said, chuckling.

“Yes, definitely,” Fanny agreed, grinning, “that’s exactly what Lucie said, several times. Then she tossed at least three of those words back at me when I told her what I’d said to Miss Pitney, who continued to dance at Lady Richmond’s ball, even as the bugles were sounding.”

Valentine rubbed his hand over his mouth, trying to subdue his grin. “And you said to Miss Pitney…”

“I told her she was a silly, heartless twit, I believe.” She blinked at him, feigning country bumpkin innocence. “Are you aware that Miss Pitney is rather closely related to the Duke of somewhere-or-other?”

“Yes, I believe I do know that. A fine family, by and large, and able to trace themselves back to the Flood, although the current generation leaves much to be desired, obviously. Anything else? Did you show too much ankle? Walk outside unaccompanied? Dump porridge on anyone’s head in a fit of pique?”

“No, none of that, I’m afraid. I was only with your sister for a few days before…before the battle. I didn’t have time to be more of a trial to her. But, Brede, if that’s what I can accomplish in only a few days, think of the havoc I could create in London.”

“Yes, I’m doing that now. It could end with irreparable damage done to the family escutcheon, couldn’t it?”

Fanny tilted her head to one side as she looked across the table at him. His eyes were positively dancing in his head. “Why, shame on you! You’re thinking of your father’s warning to you as you left for war all those years ago, aren’t you? And
delighting
in the thought.”

“I know. I’m horribly ashamed. Why, the old tyrant is probably already spinning like a top in the Brede mausoleum, just in anticipation of the disgrace. Would you like more lemonade, sweetings?”

Fanny’s mouth dropped open in mock shock, while, inwardly, she was delighting in the teasing. “You married me in hopes I’d make a cake of myself in London?”

Valentine put down the pitcher, careful to keep it out of Fanny’s reach. “No, sweetings, I did not marry you for that reason. But, speaking with you now, I am beginning to see the potential for entertainment in what is usually a pitifully boring Season. I never boasted of being a nice man, remember?”

“So you’d let me disgrace myself? You’re really despicable, aren’t you? For shame.”

No missish young debutante, not his Fanny. “Yes, but I’m bound to be thwarted in my plan, as you’d never disgrace yourself, or me, for that matter. London will take one look at you and be as entranced as I am.”

“You’re…entranced?” Fanny’s heart skipped at least two beats.

He got to his feet and walked around the table to her, held out his hand to her. “Utterly.”

Suddenly Fanny, who had been finding it so easy to talk to Valentine, banter back and forth with him, couldn’t think of a single thing to say to the man. She looked at his extended hand for a moment, and then slipped her hand into his, allowed him to gently raise her to her feet.

They were still standing like that, looking deeply into each other’s eyes, when the landlord knocked on the door and, not waiting to be begged to enter, barged into the room, wringing his hands at his ample waist. “There’s…a thousand pardons, my lord. But there’s a…a
personage
to see you. Well, two of them, actually. And neither seems willing to take no for—”

“
There
you are! I was so worried we wouldn’t be able to catch you, which would be ridiculous, as Jacob held the reins, and Lord knows he’s a sweet man, but he couldn’t push more than five miles an hour out of horses twice as fine as Papa’s, and Papa’s are very fine. We’d only just arrived when we learned that you were gone, so we
tossed
the babies at Elly and set out to hunt you down. And here you are!”

Fanny’s eyes were open wide as she goggled at the vision in burgundy silk that had just pushed past the innkeeper.
“Morgan?”