Blackstone's Bride (13 page)

The prince held a length of dripping honeycomb in his bare hands while bees poured out of the opened hive and swarmed about his head. Several clung to his moustache, doing a dance of tails and wings, signaling more bees to come. Instead of helping, Cahul backed away from the prince, waving his arms furiously, inciting the swarming bees to more aggression.

As Mr. Tallant sprinted for the hive, Violet tossed Blackstone the damp cloth, snatched up the fallen smoker, and sprang to her feet. She shook the smoker back to life, and began to pump its bellows, wreathing the prince’s head in smoke. Bees circled her hat. “Close your mouth and your eyes, your majesty, and stay still.”

In a minute Mr. Tallant was at her side, offering her a soft bristled brush. Violet passed him the smoker. She could hear the bees’ drone growing calm again. She began brushing bees from the prince’s face and hair. The prince winced and trembled, and Violet knew he’d been stung.

“Just be patient a few more minutes, your majesty.” She could hear Blackstone speaking to Rushbrooke, and General Dubusari scolding Cahul in a language she did not recognize. Mrs. Tallant was speaking calmly to the visitors huddled under the apple tree.

A short silence followed before she heard Rushbrooke speak, and Mrs. Tallant say, “There, you see, he’s not dead.”

Half an hour later, when they had all been inspected by Mrs. Tallant and pronounced free of lingering bees, the gentlemen donned their waistcoats and jackets again. The neighbors left, shaking their heads, likely convinced of the danger of bees. Violet brought Rushbrooke a draught of Mr. Tallant’s cider from the cellar and watched as his color gradually returned to normal. He said he was not yet up to a carriage ride, so Violet arranged for the barouche to return for him after her driver delivered the prince and his party to Hammersley House. As the barouche drove off she could see Cahul and the countess break into rapid speech and the prince lean back with his arms folded across his chest.

Blackstone remained talking with Tallant and the straw-hatted young man with the pretty girl. Something Blackstone said made them all laugh. Violet felt an absurd stab of envy that he should make strangers laugh so easily. She told herself not to be foolish. She did not want to laugh with Blackstone. She wanted to find her brother and go back to her beekeeping and her good works. Then Blackstone was coming her way. He took her arm and turned her towards him, plucking a bee from the flower arrangement on her bonnet. “You’re coming with me.”

She should protest. Things would not have gone so horribly awry had she not been distracted by Blackstone’s presence, but he was already in motion, hurrying her along to his carriage, a smart curricle.

Blackstone gave his own horses, no nags today, the command to go. “I had no idea that your efforts to do good in the world were so fraught with peril. Were you stung?”

“No, but I’m afraid the prince must have received three or four stings on his upper lip. He’s going to be most uncomfortable tonight.”

“You’re not sympathetic, are you?”

“I’m amazed he doesn’t get himself killed. He behaves like a child with no sense of caution.”

“You did notice that none of his people came to his aid.”

“Most people are unreasonably afraid of bees.”

“Cahul is. Terrified of them, apparently, but the others simply watched the episode unfold.”

Violet thought about it. Blackstone was right. For the second time she had cause to reproach herself for the turn of events. If she had paid less attention to the way Blackstone’s shirt clung to his person, she might have noticed. “As if the prince were an embarrassment or an inconvenience.”

“A useful embarrassment as long as our government gives him money.”

“At least no one tried to kill him or us.”

“I don’t know. Can you have Preston get some of that pomade the prince uses on his moustache? I’d like to have a chemist look at its composition.”

“You think someone put a bee attractant in his pomade?”

“It had a suspiciously floral scent, and it did draw all the bees.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“What did you and Dubusari put in your calendar for tonight?” Blackstone guided his pair in a neat turn into Park Lane, where fashionable equipages passed in a parade. He seemed able to mention her calendar with no recollection of the kiss that ended their conversation. He was fully clothed, his hands cased in driving gloves. Their bodies did not touch on the carriage seat. Violet ducked her chin and clung to the side of the vehicle. She had not posted her letter to the duchess, and to ride openly with Blackstone along the most fashionable street in London, past Penelope’s very door, was to invite notice and talk. “Oh dear.”

“Oh dear?”

“Tonight we have a box at the theater.”

“Do you expect assassins to be lurking in the audience?” The carriage rattled down the wide lane, passing oncoming traffic of various sorts, drawing appreciation from drivers and passengers.

“Not at all.” Violet wished for invisibility, but they were not invisible. Blackstone could never be invisible. There was nothing embarrassing about his horses or his rig today, but Blackstone himself drew people’s notice. The angle of his hat, the ease with which he managed his horses. “I’m sorry. I just remembered something. You interrupted me, and I forgot.”

“The perils of amnesia.”

“Or the blessings.”

She folded her hands in her lap. Even now it might not be too late. People would notice Blackstone, not the lady with him. She would send her letter directly upon her return to Hammersley House.

Chapter Thirteen

“I can readily believe . . . that reports may vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish . . . that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment . . .”

—Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice

As they entered the theater box, the prince’s party showed no sign of their earlier irritation with one another. For a moment they looked like neither kidnappers nor murderers, but a party of travelers weary of unfamiliar surroundings and over-familiar companions. Frank had often made Violet laugh describing that moment in every journey when he’d been amiable to the point of eating some mysterious dish of great national importance served in his honor. Afterward his stomach twitched while words in his hosts’ tongue failed him. General Dubusari seemed to be the only member of the prince’s party who traveled well. He was speaking his own tongue, at ease, settling the company in the narrow box and making them smile a little.

As much as Violet wanted to believe the picture of polite guests they presented, she couldn’t forget Frank’s note or that button. A situation in which someone was cutting the buttons from Frank’s coat was not a comfortable one for her brother, and someone in the group before her had put him there. While Blackstone assisted the countess, Violet took a seat beside the prince.

“You survived the bees, your majesty?” His face was puffy and mottled with red blotches.

“A few stings, Miss Hammersley. I don’t regard them. A leader is prepared to suffer for his people, you know. Or his men won’t follow him.”

“How many men do you have, your majesty?”

“In my guard, you mean?”

Violet nodded. “The ones for whom you’ve designed the uniform.”

“Ah, my royal guard.” A pleased smile lifted his moustache. “They began as a small unit, but we have been growing. With England’s help, I have been recruiting and training new officers. I believe we now have two full battalions. Dubusari, would you say that’s right?”

Dubusari, overhearing, joined in. “Quite right, your majesty.”

“My brother must have been impressed then. When he left for your country, he was eager to see what you had accomplished.”

The prince frowned in puzzlement for a moment. “But Miss Hammersley, your brother never saw my men.”

“Oh? I misunderstood. I thought he went to see your army.”

“Yes, but you see, the training grounds are in Tiraspol. Isn’t that right, Dubusari?” The prince patted Violet’s gloved hand. “The next time he visits, we will have to have a full military review.”

Violet watched his countenance for signs of alarm or consciousness, but there were none. Just the prince’s happy inability to question anything he was told. He turned to Cahul and spoke to him in their language. Cahul shook his head. The two of them shrugged as if they hadn’t any idea how odd it was that Frank had not seen the troops English money had funded.

Dubusari seemed more alert. “Miss Hammersley, have you heard from your brother? Is he a good correspondent? The English are great letter writers I hear.”

Dubusari looked as polite and quaint as ever in his gold-braided military coat and powdered wig, but his interest in Frank’s correspondence was hardly the mere politeness of guest to host. Dubusari waited for her reply while over his blue and gold shoulder Violet saw the countess tilt her head towards them.

Dubusari’s comment made a pocket of silence into which Violet tried to slip her thoughts without his notice. Frank traveled for weeks at a time on his tours of their European banking interests. Because his work often involved loans from the British government to various allies, he sent his weekly messages in the foreign office’s sealed red dispatch boxes. Violet could see now that Frank’s practice of relying on the government to carry his letters could make him appear to be a dangerous spy. Her thoughts had reached that point in mere seconds, even as Dubusari’s smile became a trifle stiff.

She let her small beaded evening bag slide off her lap to fall at her feet in the crowded theater box.

A quick frown crossed Dubusari’s face. Violet started to rise to retrieve her bag when Dubusari put a surprisingly firm hand on hers, holding her in her seat. “Allow me, Miss Hammersley.”

He reached for his cane and snagged the braided silk cord of her bag, lifting it within reach. She offered him her sweetest smile. “Thank you. Frank is a good correspondent. I can count on hearing from him every Sunday, regular as a sermon.”

She tried to read some reaction in Dubusari’s face, but two young men entered the box, hailing Blackstone. Everyone turned to them. Blackstone rose from his conversation with the countess. Her gloved hand slipped from his sleeve. The little chairs were pushed aside and everyone shifted positions, so that the newcomers might crowd into the box.

The taller of the two, a long-faced gentleman with golden hair, spoke first. “Blackstone, we’re here to accuse you of dullness. Where’s that harem of yours tonight?”

His shorter, stouter friend joined in. “Didn’t see you in the greenroom. Thought you’d be after that little actress with the legs. Lady R. wouldn’t like it, though, would she?”

“Gentlemen, you’ve not met my party, I think.” Blackstone named the prince and his companions to his friends Lord Slindon and the Honorable Charles Fothergill.

Slindon, the golden-haired man, catching sight of the countess, bowed deeply with a look of sly comprehension on his face as if the fair beauty in the box explained Blackstone’s presence.

When Blackstone turned to introduce Violet, lifting her hand in his, she realized what must happen, even as she was powerless to stop it. Before the prince and his cohort, Blackstone must name her as his fiancée.

His friends’ expressions faltered. “I say, you can’t have a—” began Fothergill, the short gentleman, when Slindon elbowed him sharply.

“Blackstone, we’ve not come to rake up your scandalous past, but to get you to tell Fothergill the story of Vasiladi and the goats. He’s not heard it.”

Blackstone lifted a brow. “Surely everyone has heard that story. I dined out on it for weeks.”

“Not Fothergill. He’s been waiting on his dying aunt in Bath.”

Fothergill nodded. “Met your sister Elena there, Blackstone. She says she can’t reach you by post. Asked me to hunt you down with some letters that have been returned to her. Didn’t bring them tonight, of course.”

A change in the music from the pit ended their talk, alerting the crowd to the opening ceremonies. Blackstone’s friends took their leave.

“You owe us, Blackstone.” Slindon wagged a finger at Blackstone.

The conductor looked up to their box, and Violet rose with the prince on her left. Blackstone took a place to her right, and the orchestra below struck up the Moldovan anthem. The prince beamed and waved to the crowd in his gold-braided blue coat. His eyes, sunk in the red puffiness of his face, did not seem to sparkle less at his enjoyment of the attention. To her right Blackstone held her gloved hand in his. She could feel the hard press of his unmistakable signet ring.

She smiled blindly while contrary images of him clashed in her mind. His friends’ casual mention of his harem, and their desire to hear amusing anecdotes, made his travels seem as scandalous as his youth had been. But if she thought about her hand in his lean one and his altered looks, she must conclude that he’d endured more than he’d told her in his time abroad. She did not know how to reconcile the two pictures in her mind, his reputation for extravagance and profligacy and his courage and kindness.

Tonight she had learned shocking details of his finances. She could scarce believe what her father’s friend had discovered. According to the bank’s information, Blackstone had no fortune left. No one knew exactly what he had done with it. It was a matter of public record that he had mortgaged the unentailed portions of Blackstone Court to the fullest extent possible, and leased the house itself to a wealthy manufacturer of crockery. His last act before leaving for Greece had been to withdraw an enormous fortune from his bank. There the money trail ended. How and where he had spent a fortune she could not know. He had certainly not restored the missing money.

Violet didn’t know how he lived or where his bachelor quarters were. Her informant had driven by the Blackstone townhouse and found it occupied by tenants. Plainly his friends were unaware of any change in his circumstances.

It did not help that he looked briefly bleak and withdrawn at the mention of his sister.

In the next moment he leaned down with no sense of propriety, his lips almost touching her ear, to say, “You may have more enemies here tonight than the prince. Have you particularly offended the Duchess of Huntingdon? She’s looking green daggers at you from across the way.”

Violet lifted her gaze and spotted Penelope. There was no going back. Blackstone’s friends would already be spreading the word of his betrothal. She must preserve a look of indifference, as if his nearness had no effect on her, and above all not look at Penelope. In a few minutes the play would begin. They would still be on display, but at least some of the crowd’s attention would be directed to the action on the stage. She did not expect to hear from or to see Penelope again. She could imagine how her public intimacy with Blackstone must look and how it must seem that she had misled Penelope. She hoped she had not offended her. Without Penelope’s support, Violet could scratch her
worthy endeavor
out of her calendar. There would be no ball to support the seamstresses of Spitalfields in their new work.

Violet sat in the middle of the prince’s party. Blackstone did not know which of them he distrusted more—the idiot prince, his hulking bodyguard, the polite general, the clinging countess, or her claret-swilling husband. It was his duty to keep Violet in sight. With a slight adjustment to the position of his seat he found he could watch her perfectly. Tonight she wore another gown as dark and rich as wine, against which her skin glowed. She held her head high, but he could see the tension in the taut cords of her neck. A marble obelisk would be more yielding.

He had not missed the fleeting alarm in her expression when she realized he must introduce her as his betrothed. He was surprised that such a thing could still bother him after his time in Greece. He wondered at it. She had broken their true engagement. She should have no trouble breaking a false one, but he was no longer sure that he knew who she was.

While he was away she had somehow become this cold sophisticated woman in the fashionable gown with its black figured lace and bold color. Only a dusting of pale freckles across her cheeks and nose reminded him of her younger self, of the trusting girl she’d been. It had been a mistake to kiss her, a mistake he had repeated so often in the past that he ought now to have avoided it. In the past, kissing Violet had led them to the folly of an engagement.

At the time, he had believed himself free of his family. His father and mother and sisters seemed to lead separate lives from his, so he had imagined himself free to marry Violet whatever disapproval his family might express. He believed he had carefully considered everything that could be said or done against their marriage. He knew his father would likely cut off his allowance, but he had savings and George Hammersley would look out for him, and in time Blackstone Court would be his whether his father approved of his bride or not. He never foresaw that he would have to choose his family over Violet, just as he never doubted her commitment to their union.

But summoned to his dying father’s side, he had seen only that he must make his father’s unexpected death bearable to those who would suffer from it most. He gave the promise his father asked of him.
You are Blackstone, now
, his father had said.

It had been days before he could return to Hammersley House and Violet. By then the scandal had broken. All of fashionable London had seen the painting. He had gone to Hammersley House to find comfort in Violet’s arms. Instead he’d found her hurt and unreachable. He still did not know whether he or she had blundered more that night, in that moment of decision when he waited for her to choose him and to let the world say what it would. Instead she had ended their engagement and returned his ring.

This morning it had been a mistake to kiss her, not because it summoned the past, but because he wanted to kiss her again and change the future.

During the first act Violet sat between Dubusari and the prince while the count stared out over the theater. On the stage, the actors strained valiantly to make their lines heard and relied on the broad comedy of exaggerated gestures. Violet studied the count and countess, who did not fit any idea she had formed of how married couples behaved, neither those with a warm attachment towards one another, nor those whose familiarity with each other rendered them apt to snap and pick at one another even in company. She had to admit to herself that she might not have seen all the possibilities of the married state. Her mother’s early death had given her no opportunity to watch her own parents’ marriage, an opportunity which might have given her more insight, but she felt there was something missing in the count and countess’s relationship, some connective tissue whether of affection or irritation, that would show that they belonged together.

The prince leaned forward, entranced by the play until the first half ended. He turned to Violet to declare that the young actress who played the lost slave girl was remarkable. He dabbed his eyes at her father’s grief over their parting.

In the next moment, the interval brought another guest to their box, Penelope Frayne, the Duchess of Huntington. They shifted chairs and persons again at the duchess’s arrival. She smiled at Violet and dropped a gracious curtsy to the prince, who, on being informed of her grace’s rank, raised her up. Penelope thanked him for his kindness and begged to be acquainted with his party. The prince performed the introductions admirably, ending with Blackstone and Violet.

“Is each English lady more beautiful than the last?” The prince executed a sweeping bow. “You will break my heart if you have a fiancé like Miss Hammersley, Duchess.”