Blackstone's Bride (12 page)

It was awhile before he found himself ready for public scrutiny.

Maybe when they found Frank, Blackstone would beg Lady Ravenhurst to dance naked before him and maybe then he would forget Violet Hammersley.

* * *

When Miss Wembley came to chide her and help her to dress, Violet submitted to her maid’s scold and her ministrations. Blackstone’s hungry kiss had made her forget who she was, but Miss Wembley quickly restored her proper self. Even as she allowed Miss Wembley to cinch and smooth and comb and brush her back to herself, the question that had come to her that first night occupied a part of her mind. After more than a year abroad Blackstone had not gone home to the place he loved. Violet wanted to know why. If he would not answer her questions, she would investigate on her own. She would start with his finances. It would be nothing, the work of a few hours to learn what his finances were. “Follow the money, and you’ll find the truth,” her father always said. In his person and manner Blackstone showed no want of wealth, but there had been that horse that never came from the sort of stable he was apt to keep. She puzzled over his working for the government and riding that pathetic nag.

She ended up writing two notes, one to Penelope, and the other, to a discreet employee of her father’s bank who could be trusted to make the proper inquiries into Blackstone’s financial situation. The next time she encountered her false fiancé, she would be armed with information.

Chapter Twelve

He wisely resolved . . . that no sign of admiration should now escape him, nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity . . .

—Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice

Once Blackstone recovered from his encounter with Violet he recalled his intention. He wanted Wilde. The note he’d sent round for the youth much earlier asked Wilde to delay his daily exploration of the docklands. Someone in the prince’s party must be taking messages to and from Frank’s captors. Blackstone wanted Wilde to see the members of the prince’s party so that the youth could recognize any messenger sent to Frank’s guards.

Stevens had reported another argument between the count and countess and had followed the prince’s valet twice to Milvert’s Hotel, but he had not seen the man meet anyone other than the hotel staff. The management was still stalling the prince, claiming to make the extra preparations to the suite required for a royal visit. According to Stevens no one at Hammersley House had seen either the countess’s maid or the prince’s chef leave the house.

When he returned to the club, Blackstone found Wilde waiting for him in the coffee room. The sofas had been pushed aside to create a large open space in which Clare and Hazelwood were exchanging parries with the British cavalry’s finest sabers.

The clang of metal meeting metal echoed in the room. Wilde sat in a brown leather wing chair drinking coffee and observing the match. He sprang out of the chair as Blackstone entered.

“You wanted me, sir?”

“Blackstone!” Hazelwood parried a thrust from Clare with more skill and energy than Blackstone supposed he possessed. “Settle a dispute for us.”

“Not with a sword.” Blackstone turned to Wilde. “I want you at Miss Hammersley’s beekeeping demonstration. Can you get there?”

“Beekeeping? Where, sir?”

“Chelsea. I want you to be part of the crowd, so that you can get a good look at the prince and his party. One of them is likely sending or accepting messages from Frank’s keepers. If you can spot the man in Wapping, he may lead you to Frank’s keepers and to Frank.”

“What disguise should I wear for this assignment, sir?” Blackstone studied the boy. He was dressed like a perfect gentleman, yet there was that in his features, in the breadth of the cheekbones, the outward turn of the ears, the freckles, that suggested an Englishman from the ranks of the bustling lower orders.

“Maybe a grocer . . .”

“Does he get to take the girl with him?” Hazelwood asked.

Instant hope sprang up in the boy’s eyes.

“Miss Kirby would make the disguise perfect. See if you can talk her into it, Wilde.”

Hazelwood gave him an approving nod.

* * *

Nate headed for Kirby’s shop as soon as he dressed for his part.

The shop was empty. Miranda sat on a high stool behind her counter bent over a bit of sewing. Nate took in the fiery gleam of her hair, the neat white part across the top of her head, and the creamy wings of her collarbone above the lace at her bodice. She worked with quick neat jabs of her needle, attaching buttons to a silver-embroidered white silk waistcoat.

The sewing changed a bit when she noticed him and pretended not to.

“What are you up to?” he asked.

“You can see.”

“Who’s the waistcoat for?”

“Lord Hazelwood.” She held it up and gave it a critical eye. “I wish Mr. Goldsworthy would not make him wear everything stained.”

“It’s his disguise.”

Miranda rolled her eyes heavenward and jabbed her needle through the fabric again.

Nate was glad to see she wore a leather thimble on her middle finger. He waited. He knew she’d noticed his clothes, too. She was a tailor’s daughter. She noticed every man’s dress and could read the details of his bank statement in the cut of his lapels. “What are
you
dressed for? Cutting hay?”

“That case I’m on.” He knew she would notice his open shirt and rolled up sleeves and the red braces.

“You’re not headed for the docks dressed like that.”

“You’re a sharp one, Miranda Kirby.”

“Well, where are you headed?” She cast him an annoyed glance.

“To see a prince.”

“What a bouncer.” She went back to jabbing her needle through the silk, but he knew he had her.

“It’s the truth. Lord Blackstone asked me to go. He said I could invite you.” “

“You’re hoaxing me.”

“It’s a beautiful day. You could come. We’ll go in a hackney there and back.” Nate jingled the coins in his pocket from Goldsworthy’s working funds.

She put down the sewing in her lap. “You think I would go anywhere with you looking like a farmer?”

“A grocer, a perfectly respectable trade. You’d have to dress your part, too.”

“My part!”

“We’re a pair of cottagers interested in beekeeping.”

“Bees? You mean swarms of stinging insects.” She shuddered.

“You’ve got bees all wrong, Miranda. They’re honey makers, flower sippers, winged dancers. That’s where Prince Andre Sturdzi is off to today, to see Miss Hammersley’s beekeeping demonstration.”

“Aren’t you the honey-tongued rogue?”

“That’s the spirit.” He grinned at her pun. “Are you game?”

She was back in minutes, looking so pretty, in a white gown with bits of blue embroidery, he had a momentary loss of brain function. His body stood alert, like a good soldier awaiting orders, but no orders came from his befuddled brain. Then she spoke, and she was his Miranda again.

“No touching.”

He nodded. “But you can touch me if you want to.”

“Saint Peter will interview you first.”

“We’ll see.” He held the shop door for her, and she sailed through.

* * *

Violet smiled at Mr. Rushbrooke, who greeted them at the door of the Tallants’ cottage. He had donned a thick white cotton beekeeper’s kit over his black clerical suit. His face was flushed, and bright beads of moisture dotted his brow in the heat.

“Prince, Miss Hammersley, welcome. You’ve come just in time. I’ve assembled the local people for the demonstration at the foot of the garden.” To Blackstone and the others he gave a curt nod.

Blackstone merely quirked a brow. Violet turned to introduce the party to the Tallants. Mr. Tallant and his wife were among the more accomplished of the beekeepers in the organization. Their small cottage had a long narrow garden, protected by a border of hawthorn hedge with three damson trees to make a windbreak. A gravel path led around the outside of the garden and down the slope through beds of herbs and flowers and dark earthen rows of new-planted vegetables. The air was fragrant with turned earth and new green shoots of leeks. At the foot of the garden three hives stood in a clear space opposite a pair of apple trees about to bud. The faint drowsy buzz of bees and the warm fragrant air marked the garden apart from the streets they’d left behind.

Later in the season, on a visit to one of her beekeeping associates, Violet would also don a white cotton bee kit over her clothes with a hat and dark veil and stout leather gloves. Stepping into a garden as a keeper was like entering a stately dance after the mad reel of the day. When she listened to the bees and pumped the bellows on the tin smoker to send puffs of calming smoke over a hive, she found herself slowing her movements, even her heartbeat. Under the influence of the smoke the bees would seek the bottom layer of the hive and fill themselves with honey.

Today she would not be working with the bees directly, but she had dressed prudently in a long-sleeved, white muslin gown with lavender sprigs. Although she had recommended similar attire to her guests, the prince and his companions wore their military blues and reds and gleaming gold braid. They gathered at the top of the garden by a small shed where Mr. Tallant kept his tools and kits. General Dubusari pronounced the garden charming. Cahul frowned severely, and the countess plied her fan with gentle waves. The count found a bench in the shade and leaned against the rough shed, closing his eyes.

The countess clung to Blackstone’s arm, her bosom pressing against him, and asked, “Are we safe in our gowns? Do they attract bees?”

As Mr. Tallant helped Mr. Rushbrooke with his veiled hat and gloves, he advised the other gentlemen to change. “Now, my lords, and your majesty, you, too, best to remove your jackets and waistcoats before we go down in the garden. Bees don’t like dark colors. Reminds them of the badgers that steal their honey.”

Too late Violet tried to look away from Blackstone as he shed his jacket. He handed the garment to Mrs. Tallant. A chocolate silk waistcoat hugged his lean frame and showed the breadth of his shoulders. When he unbuttoned the waistcoat, her throat went dry. The unseasonal heat made the fine linen of his shirt cling to his chest and belly. He pulled the fabric loose from his person. He was not naked. Violet should hardly be distracted by him, but the fine fabric, like a sheer curtain, blew against the hard shape under it. He turned to hand his waistcoat to Mrs. Tallant, and Violet found herself staring at the laces at the top of his breeches, taut across the narrow span of his waist. This morning she had pressed against him as if starved for contact with his ribs, his belly, his chest. It made no sense. If a woman craved contact with a hard surface, why could she not hug a fine marble column in her foyer and be done with it? Why did marble columns, hard and smooth as they were, not satisfy the silly urge to press oneself madly to a man?

Cahul helped the prince shed his military jacket. Without it, he looked like an overfed schoolboy, grown stout on treats sent from home. Next to Violet the countess studied Blackstone openly. “How warm it is! How lucky the gentlemen are to shed their clothes. Wouldn’t you like to do the same, Miss Hammersley?”

Violet hardly knew what she said in reply. In the beginning she hadn’t known precisely what she and Blackstone were doing. But, ignorant as she had been, she had known that clothes were distinctly in the way, that skin ached for the touch of skin. That first afternoon of discovery, Blackstone had shed his coat and waistcoat and pulled his linen shirt from his breeches so that her hands could roam his chest and ribs. Touching him had made her desperate to get closer, until she pressed her cheek to his chest to hear his heart pounding.

Blackstone’s amused glance met hers. She’d been caught at her less than covert appraisal of his person. “Practicing amnesia?”

She dropped her wayward gaze and went to help Mr. Rushbrooke. Fully suited up, he was peering through the dark netting of his hat, looking for the smoker. Violet lifted it into his line of vision.

“Here you are, Mr. Rushbrooke.” She could feel the burn of the sun on her neck and shoulders.

Rushbrooke’s heated breath puffed his veil in and out. “Ready?” he called. “I’ll lead the way.” He started down the path along the hedgerow, his pace deliberate. Violet followed. Behind them the prince talked excitedly and Mr. Tallant offered calm replies. Violet was coming to recognize the prince’s erratic, impulsive movements. He seemed susceptible to suggestion. The smallest hint might set him off abruptly.

At the bottom of the garden, about ten guests of the Beekeepers Association had gathered under the dappled shade of two budding apple trees. Rushbrooke and Tallant approached one of the three hives in the clear area. Tallant’s hives were constructed of boxes stacked on one another like the stories of a listing tenement. If they lacked the romance of the old-fashioned skeps, Violet admired the innovation because it meant Mr. Tallant could harvest his honey without disturbing the queen and her brood in the lower regions of the hive. Today, one of the earliest warm days of spring, Mr. Tallant would simply see whether his bees had honey enough to begin breeding. Sometimes the beekeeper had to offer a syrup of warm sugar water to tide them over until there were sufficient spring blooms.

Mr. Rushbrooke, lumbering like a dancing bear in his extra layers of clothing, pumped smoke from the smoker around the top edges of the hive. She had never noticed the awkwardness of his body before.

Mr. Tallant, following behind Rushbrooke, took up a short length of iron rod and began to pry up the lid of the top box. It stuck, and as he applied more pressure, Rushbrooke stood stiffly at his side, energetically pumping smoke from the smoker until the two men were enveloped in a cloud like soot from a chimney sweep’s exertions.

“Wot’s Tallant doing?” one of the neighbors asked in a loud whisper.

Violet turned to explain. “Sometimes the wax sticks the lid to the hive, and the keeper must pry it open.”

Violet smiled at a pretty redheaded girl holding the arm of a straw-hatted young man with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. An abrupt crack of wood splintering made the girl gasp and clutch her companion. Violet swung her gaze around to see what had alarmed the girl and saw Mr. Rushbrooke toppling like a tree felled by an ax. Before she could move, he hit the ground with a thud. He lay flat and still on the grass. The smoker rolled from his slack hand.

For a moment everyone simply stared.

“’as ’e been stung to ’is death?” someone wondered aloud.

The straw-hatted young man with his arm around the girl, spoke at once. “’e musta fainted in the ’eat.”

“A man swooning? ’oo ever ’eard of such a thing,” scoffed another.

Blackstone had already stepped forward. He knelt at the fallen man’s side, lifting the veiled helmet from his head. “Mrs. Tallant. We need water!”

Mrs. Tallant hurried off.

Violet went to kneel at Rushbrooke’s other side and remove his gloves. Blackstone opened the fallen man’s bee suit and loosened his collar. Rushbrooke’s eyes remained closed, his face scarlet. When Mrs. Tallant returned with her bucket, Blackstone stripped off his own neckcloth and handed it to Violet. “Bathe his neck and temples. Tallant, help me get this suit off of him.” For a few minutes the three worked in silence to cool the overheated man.

Violet dipped Blackstone’s linen in the bucket a third time when she became aware of a distinct change in the drone of the bees. She saw Mr. Tallant lift his head, a look of alarm spreading across his countenance. He sprang up, and she turned to follow his gaze.