Kate Moore (18 page)

***

Susannah was very cold. She kept her teeth clenched and her arms crossed tightly. Still she was shaking deep inside. If she tried to speak or move the shaking would break her apart. She could not go to his house to wait for him.

It was light now, and other carriages were about. Once or twice, the driver slowed to let another vehicle pass. Susannah uncrossed her arms and pulled herself over to the door. She tapped on the roof as loudly as she could. The carriage slowed, then stopped. She pushed open the door. She felt lightheaded, and the shivering was beginning to take over her limbs. She would never get away if she hesitated now. She gathered her cloak about her and jumped down, hitting the pavement hard and taking a couple of stumbling steps. The driver yelled, but she hurried away.

When Susannah reached Holburn, she thought of Henry and turned her steps toward his lodging. Then it started to snow, a freak storm. She walked on.

Now it was complete. The past had reclaimed them both. Winter had returned.

21

The snow hushed the city. Susannah sat at the window of Henry’s rooms watching the streets fill up with white. Only a few incongruously green leaves remained visible on the trees across the way. She had stopped shivering except for a tiny quiver somewhere deep inside. Her brother had wrapped her in an extra counterpane and supplied her with hot coffee or tea whenever her cup cooled. He had taken her in without question, he and Ned Noakes sensing her need for quiet. Ned had somehow procured most of her things from the Lacys’, and she had had time to think.

Twice in her life she had come to London, fallen in love, and been ruined. She did not wonder much at this second downfall. Someone had seen her go apart with Warne last night, had seen them dance at Almack’s, had remembered her shameful past. Warne would soon know the whole history and be grateful that she had not accepted his offer. He was not bound to her in any way.

The unseasonal storm would close the roads and prevent the stage from running, but soon, maybe tomorrow, she would leave London for Bath. There was an employment agency there always in need of people to fill temporary positions with visitors to the city. Once, when she had thought herself unable to bear another week in her uncle’s house, Susannah had talked to the couple who ran the agency. She would present herself to them now and hope they could help her.

***

Warne returned to the house on Upper Brook Street in the early dark of that snowy day. He found his friend and his son in his library. He greeted them, and saw a look pass between the two.

“Mrs. Bowen is resting?” he asked.

“She never arrived here,” Bellaby explained. “I didn’t expect her. Kirby interviewed your coachman. The man says she jumped from the chaise and took off on foot.”

For a moment Warne succumbed to a weary blackness. He sank into a chair and pressed his hands to his tired head. He had lost her. He had a sharp image of the figure with the unseeing gaze huddled in his carriage.

“She must have gone to her brother,” Bellaby suggested.

Warne lifted his head and glanced appreciatively at Neil. Susannah was sensible, like Neil. She would do that. He thought of her quick stride, her pleasure in that small freedom. The morbid fear that seized him passed. “Yes,” he said.

“Then you can find the brother and call on her tomorrow,” Bellaby said. “Gray’s Inn, right?”

Warne nodded.

“Kirby’s told me a bit of what happened. Forced Lacy to see reason about the boy, did you?”

Warne glanced at his son, and received a look in return so like one of his own that it left him momentarily speechless. Bellaby laughed. Warne said, “Lord Lacy found that his daughter was about to make a far more ambitious marriage than he had ever dreamed of for her, and he thought it to his own advantage to consent.”

“It’s going to be a grand wedding, I hear,” Bellaby said.

“The grandest,” Warne agreed.

“But we have to wait near six months for it,” Kirby said, frowning.

Bellaby reached across a playful fist and nudged the boy. Warne noted the two seemed to have come to some understanding.

“Announcement in the
Chronicle
?” Bellaby wondered.

“Tomorrow,” Warne said.

“That soon?”

Warne thought it sounded far away when he recalled that he could not search for Susannah until then. He stared at the fire.

Bellaby recounted the steps he had taken on Kirby’s behalf. Warne’s solicitor would be calling in the morning, and the boy would be properly established in no time.

“And what of Mrs. Bowen?” Bellaby asked.

“I wanted to kill Lacy,” Warne confessed. He looked at his son. “But it would be a bit awkward to kill my daughter-in-law’s papa.” He stood and crossed to the brandy decanter, poured himself a glass, and returned to his chair. “When Lacy separated from his wife ten years ago, the children went with him and he took Susannah in as an unpaid governess. She had run away with a fellow named Price, a half-pay officer, a notorious seducer. Price took her as far as an inn in Baldock. I suspect he raped her. At any rate he abandoned her. Her family cast her off and never made any attempt to go after the man.”

He felt his body tighten in anger as he related the story Lacy had just imparted to him, and he paused for a moment to drink a swallow of brandy, letting the fiery liquid warm him.

“Within four years her father was ruined, and shortly after, he killed himself and his wife in a driving accident. He was drunk. The eldest son has repaired the family fortune somewhat by an advantageous marriage. Lacy himself feels he was extraordinarily generous to his disgraced and Penniless niece.

“This spring Lacy offered her a bargain. If she would guide Juliet to a marriage he could approve of, he would pension Susannah off with a thousand pounds and a cottage. But last night at Miss Lacy’s ball, someone suggested that Susannah had been his mistress for all these years and that she was leaving his protection for mine.”

“Damn,” said Bellaby. “Who spread such a lie?”

“Ann Trentfield,” Warne answered. “I had an interview with Mrs. Trentfield this afternoon. She is going to put her considerable powers of invention to work to repair Mrs. Bowen’s reputation with the
ton.”

“Then you’ll cut out her tongue,” said Neil.

Warne allowed himself a grim smile. Price and Susannah’s father were beyond his anger. Lacy was to become a family connection. So Ann Trentfield had borne the heat of his wrath, even if, as a gentleman, he could not strike her. But he was wiser now than he had been when his father separated him from Ellen Kirby. He would not waste his energies in fury. He would spend all to get Susannah Bowen back.

***

The business of establishing Francis Kirby Arden as Earl of Dovedale and legitimate offspring of the Marquess of Warne consumed most of the day. Still Warne had found time to procure two documents he believed essential to the winning of Susannah Bowen. Then when he found her brother, he learned that she had taken the stage for Bath that morning. He returned to Brook Street, ordered a horse saddled, and went to find his son.

Kirby and Neil were in the breakfast room, looking at the ordnance survey, Neil obviously explaining something to the younger man. He broke off as Warne entered.

“Susannah took the stage for Bath this morning. I’m going after her,” Warne told them.

Bellaby nodded.

“Kirby,” Warne began and stopped. He wanted to marry Susannah immediately, but how could he tell his son? “I asked your mother to marry me when we were eight. I asked her again at twelve. I persuaded her to marry me at sixteen, and I never married while she lived.”

Kirby studied his father. The man was not the dissolute aristocrat on whom he had imagined avenging himself. Bellaby’s stories were acquainting him with this real father of his, the man his mother had loved. She was gone. No Penelope for this Odysseus. He now realized that she had waited when perhaps she should have acted.

“Father,” he said. He liked the surprised look he caught in Warne’s eyes. “I have something I think you could use.”

The young man disappeared, and Warne turned to his friend. “What have you been telling him?” he asked.

Bellaby shrugged. “Just . . . stories.” He added, “I like the boy.”

Kirby returned and handed Warne a bit of folded black cloth. “I’d take two pistols,” he suggested.

Bellaby went to the map, pointing. “Look, the stage will stop here, here, and here. Should be able to catch them past Hungerford,” he said. He turned, but Warne was gone.

22

It was a clear day, and the snow was melting. Still it was odd to see the countryside blanketed with white while the hedges and trees showed green where the wind had shaken them free of snow. The freak storm had been a source of conversation among the passengers on the stage for many tedious miles. The Meek sisters, Miss Meek and Miss Sarah Meek, two ladies who shared a vicarage with their brother near Bath, could not recall anything like it. Susannah suspected they were starved for excitement. They feared for their roses and their brother, who, according to their account, was hopelessly unable to do for himself, and must have frozen somewhere between the church and the vicarage without his sisters there to keep him dressed sensibly. The farmer and his wife, with whom Susannah shared her seat, had also been deeply concerned by the snow. There were crops newly sprouted which surely had been blasted by the cold. Only the pockmarked man in the corner opposite here seemed indifferent to the weather. “It’s not the end of the world,” he said early in the conversation, and closed his eyes.

Susannah tried to adopt his phlegmatic approach.
It’s not the end of the world
, she told herself. But the farmer’s restless little boy stood clinging to his father’s legs and from time to time would clutch Susannah’s knee and smile shyly at her, or one of the Miss Meeks would say something about their brother, and Susannah would feel the shivering start inside her again. She reminded herself that she was very strong, that for ten years her self-sufficiency had sustained her in Uncle John’s cold house. And she would have better memories to sustain her in this exile. Warne’s kiss and his touch.

She was thinking of his warm grasp that night as they made their way through the woods of Vauxhall when the horses suddenly slowed and the farmer clutched his son to keep the boy from falling.

“We’ve been stopped,” said Miss Meek.

“Likely a fallen tree or sommat,” said the pockmarked man, rousing himself and taking a look out the window.

But this prosaic view was contradicted when a shot rang out, followed by the shouts of the driver and some other party.

“Highwaymen!” breathed Miss Sarah Meek, her eyes round with excitement.

Susannah wanted to suggest that being held up was an overrated experience, but the door of the stage was wrenched open, and a voice came from outside, calling her name. “No one will be harmed if Mrs. Bowen steps out of the coach,” said the voice.

Her fellow travelers regarded her as if she had sprouted a second head. None of them would come to her aid, nor did she wish them to offer any resistance to an armed ruffian.

“Susannah Bowen,” the deep, muffled voice called again.

“Excuse me,” she said to the others. “It appears I must get out here. I’m sure you will all be safe.” She mustered what dignity she could and stepped from the carriage.

Then she had to smile. It was silly really. It could not be happening, and he looked very dangerous. He wore the tricorn, the black mask over his face, a greatcoat with an impressive number of capes, and held a pistol braced across his saddle horn. The blue eyes, however, were laughing.

“What do you want with me, sir?” she asked.

He leaned down and said softly, “Do you want me to tell you
here
?”

She glanced back at the stage and saw her fellow passengers gaping at them. She shook her head.

“Then you’ll have to come with me, Susannah,” he said. “There’s a stump over there you can mount from, but first . . .” With his free hand he reached behind him and untied a bundle from the back of his horse. He handed it to her. “For your fellow travelers.”

Susannah passed the bundle, which smelled suspiciously like fresh bread, into the stage.

“Will you be safe, ma’am?” the farmer asked, taking it from her hands.

“I doubt it,” said Susannah. “But I will be happy,” she assured them. She turned away from the stage, and was about to shut the door when Warne leaned down and tossed a white card into the passengers’ midst.

The Meek sisters were puzzling over its meaning many miles later, for the little card read
The Marquess of Warne.

***

“That was hardly original,” Susannah complained later when they had been shown to a private room at the Bear, an inn on the outskirts of Hungerford. A fire was blazing and a table had been set for them, yet she stood a little apart from him looking at the flames.

“Remember,” he said softly. “I did it first. Kirby merely copied me.”

She sensed that he had closed the distance between them, but she did not look up. She wasn’t sure how he would look at her now that he knew, as he undoubtedly did, that she was not Susannah Bowen.

“You called me Mrs. Bowen this afternoon,” she said.

“I thought you would be travelling under that name,” he replied mildly. “But you needn’t use it any longer if you don’t wish to.”

She glanced up then, caught the full light in his eyes, and blinked. “You cannot wish to marry me, knowing what you must know,” she said flatly. “I’ve been ruined twice.”

He smiled at that. She was a babe really, who hardly knew all the ways he meant to ruin her. “But I do wish to marry you,” he said. He saw the wild incredulity in her eyes, and his throat ached for the hurt she had suffered. “Your uncle is a passionless man. The words he used against you could be said of Molly Hayter, not you. The words for you are different. Do you want to hear them?”

Susannah shook her head. Her eyes stung with tears, and she turned her back to him. After moment she felt his hands on her shoulders turning her around, and she had no power to resist his gentleness. She let herself be folded in a quiet embrace, her face pressed to his shoulder, his cradling her head.

“I’ll say them anyway, my love,” he whispered. “I am rather used to having my way. Generous,” he began. “Kind, witty, honest, honorable.”

“Stop,” she protested, lifting her head, but that proved to be a mistake, and she saw it at once. He went still, and the quality of his embrace changed. After a moment he seemed to master himself and took her by the hand, pulling her to the table set for them. From his coat he withdrew two papers and spread them on the linen. “Look,” he said. “Ruin’s reward.”

Susannah bent over the two official-looking documents. The language of the first had to do with title and boundaries, and she recognized it as a deed to the cottage her uncle had promised her. She glanced at Warne.

“The second one,” he said.

The second was easier to read, the language more plain, though still official. It granted the bearer the right to marry at any convenient time or place, a special license. He was offering her safety or the danger of his love, letting her choose.

She raised her eyes to his. She seemed to be standing on a high bluff, one she must step off. “I love you,” she said.

He pulled her to him and reached for her cap, his fingers tearing at the pins.

“What are you doing?” she managed to ask.

He plucked the lace cap from her and tossed it on the fire. It curled and blackened instantly and disappeared in a little flare of light. “I would rather you not wear caps anymore,” he said and his mouth descended on hers.

She yielded to him, and he felt the fear in her dissolve.

If he had given the first half of his life to hatred, he would give the second half to love. He would not make iron only, but flesh and blood, not machines but sons . . . and daughters . . . with wide mouths and straight backs and fiery hair like their mother’s. The Iron Lord lifted his head and looked in the generous eyes of his love and he laughed.

***

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