Miss Antiqua's Adventure (22 page)

All this while, Fawkes had been lighting the few candles he was able to find, and he now pointed to the trussed-up Weasel. “Look here, sir!” With a nod from Vincent, he hoisted Weasel upon his shoulder and bore him like a sack of meal from the room.

“You have been busy, haven’t you?” Vincent inquired in his drowsy way.

“You needn’t talk to us in the toplofty manner!” Antiqua said, her discomfiture finding an outlet in pique. “We didn’t mean to get into such a scrape, you know, and our reasons were quite honorable.”

“But, perhaps, foolish.” He silenced their protestations with a raised palm. “Where is Balstone?”

His somber tone brought an instant reply. “He was here, Jack, but he left some time ago,” Archie said. “Said he’d be back, though, and mind you, he meant us no good. Set his two watchdogs on us and I’d about given up on things when Antiqua had this ripping notion of playing sick—”

“One of Miss Greybill’s most renowned talents, to be sure,” his brother dryly interjected.

The unfriendly frown that earned him from the lady was ignored.

“Yes, but she was first rate and we were able to overpower them,” Archie summed up. “When we heard your steps, we thought it was Balstone returning.”

“Has the Viscount seen the blank pages in the packet?” Vincent asked.

“There was one painfully numb moment before Archie exclaimed, “But only we knew—”

“How did you know?” Antiqua cried as she leapt to her feet.

“It was I, of course, who placed the blanks within the packet,” Vincent admitted “The real documents regarding the Bonapartist activities have been in the care of the proper authorities since my return to London. Thomas Allen did his work well. Because of him, Napoleon shall in all probability live out his days on St. Helena.”

“And Antiqua would have it that you were a damned traitor! I told her she was nothing but a cloth-headed—”

“But how did you come to be possessed of all his information?” Antiqua demanded of Vincent, ignoring Archie completely. “How did you effect the change in papers? Why didn’t you tell me what you were about?”

“I suggest you sit down,” Vincent directed her quietly.

She sat. She had learned long since not to disobey that particular tone of his, but it rankled just the same. He had played her for a fool all along! He smiled and she silently seethed.

“I knew in Calais, my dear that you had fallen into some deep doings. I had the packet from your maid—”

“Lucy! But Lucy swore she’d said nothing to you.”

“Lucy told me nothing. But she had sense enough to hand over the messages you were carrying. The documents unfortunately did not reveal the identity of the English agent employed by the Bonapartists and I knew my only hope of discovering him was to let you finish what Allen had instructed you to do. I may be excused, I believe, for not realizing then just how difficult protecting you would be. Being better acquainted with you now, I would of course keep you under lock and key.”

That he should use her in such a shabby manner infuriated her. Even the gentle stroke beneath his matter-of-fact explanation could not lessen Antiqua’s mounting rage. Her inimical stare seemed only to amuse him further, however, and the corners of his lips lifted slightly as he mused, “And what now, I wonder, shall I do with you?”

Antiqua was prevented from informing him that he’d have nothing whatever to do with her by the re-emergence of Fawkes. Rolling Elton from behind the settee, he heaved the burly weight across his shoulder with a grunt of effort and carried him out with a grin of triumph. Vincent responded with a slow smile of his own.

The diversion thus created allowed Archie to muster what dignity a youth could after being outwitted, kidnapped, thumped, tied up, and lectured to as if no more than ten. But standing erect, he faced his brother and said firmly, “There’s no need for you to concern yourself, Jack. I’ve already told Antiqua I’ll set everything to rights. I mean to say, I realize I oughtn’t to have gotten her into this fix, and I mean to see that her reputation is not discredited.”

“Ah . . . forgive me, but I fail to see the point you are making,” Vincent said after a brief pause.

“But I’m telling you I’ll marry her, of course,” Archie explained.

Chapter 18

“Though I dislike having to contradict you, little brother, I am afraid I can only tell you that in no circumstances will you marry Miss Greybill.”

Vincent turned to remove his great-coat as he spoke, so neither of his listeners could see the closed cast of his features.

“But, Jack, surely you see the necessity of our marriage,” Archie protested.

“The only necessity I see if for the pair of you to be promptly spanked and sent to bed without your supper.”

This flippant reminder of their childish mischief hurled Antiqua to the end of her restraint. “How dare you!” she stormed, not deigning to notice Archie’s frenetic signal to stop. “Of all the insufferable things you’ve said and done—”

“Too numerous to catalogue, I fear.”

“—this tyrannical attitude of yours is the worst! We are not children playing at spillikins! I
will
marry Archie—”

“You will?” queried her surprised
fiancé
, whose last memory of her views on this subject had been quite otherwise.

“I will,” she insisted devoutly, “and there is nothing, nothing your brother can do to stop us!”

“No?”

The lazy question was dismissed with an airy snap of her fingers. “No! And when I am Marchioness of Rosewarren, you shan’t speak to me in such tones.”

“Rid yourself, I beg, of the notion that you will ever be a Marchioness, Brown-eyes. As my wife, you shall simply be Mrs. Vincent.”

“Your wife!” Archie exclaimed, not without relief.

“Forgive me, but as I was the first to compromise Miss Greybill, mine is the prior obligation to make reparation,” Vincent stated in an indefinable tone.

“Obligation!” Antiqua choked, barely able to speak through her fury. She gripped the back of the wooden chair and raged through clenched teeth, “Understand this, Mr. Vincent! I do not intend to marry you. I’ve accepted Lord Rosewarren’s kind offer—yes, I have, Archie!—and when I am married to a Marquis—”

“Ah, yes,” Vincent broke in harshly. “You have made your ambitions perfectly plain, my dear. Nothing but a title will do for you.”

The brusque words slapped at her. “Oh, I don’t require a title, sir! An honest name is all I seek—”

As soon as her words struck the air, Antiqua wished them unsaid. She hadn’t meant what came out, but though she longed to erase them, it was, of course, much too late.

Vincent tore through her with his cold gaze. “Rosewarren, leave us.”

The Marquis obeyed the curt command without hesitation. Antiqua did not even see him quit the room. She could not strip her gaze from the naked fury on Vincent’s face. She had seen him drunk and sober, cool and warm, kind and contemptuous. But what she saw now robbed all color from her cheeks and painfully drained all feeling from her heart. She flinched beneath the whip of his angry voice.

“I will not permit you, my little actress, to marry Rosewarren. You’d play him false long before the wedding night was out.” His lips parted in a sensual smile that played the very fiber of her soul like a bow on a violin.

She tried to speak, but before the first syllable was out, he had taken her in his arms.

“Do you think,” he inquired in a voice of velvet, “that as Marchioness, you’d be kissed like this?”

She thought she would never draw another breath after the instant his lips besieged hers. Commanding, consuming, constricting, his kiss irrevocably claimed her as his. She was faintly conscious of her mantalet sliding from her shoulders to the floor, of Vincent’s fingers releasing the top buttons of her gown. Like a candle set too near dry kindling, his passion enflamed her dormant womanhood.

Without fully understanding what she did, Antiqua cradled his head between her hands and brought the intensity of her hunger to his mouth with a slow, complete demonstration from her own. In her newfound greed, she coaxed his lips open to meet the demand of hers. Needing, wanting to be as close to him as possible, she curved her supple body to his muscular mold.

The unexpected eagerness of her response penetrated Vincent’s conscience. His hands continued to caress her, his lips skimmed over her jaw before swerving to the soft curl of her earlobe.

“Antiqua,” he murmured so hoarsely it echoed a moan, “I need you.”

“Ah, how the fates reward you, Vincent,” observed a voice full of irony. “To be the one chosen to pluck such a rose.”

Antiqua stiffened and then took a step back to free herself from Vincent’s embrace. His hands clamped on her shoulders, preventing her from leaving and, as she looked up into his face so suddenly void of expression, she ceased to resist. Together, they turned to face the intruder.

“I must confess, Balstone, that I have much anticipated our meeting again,” Vincent drawled.

The Viscount stood nonchalantly on the threshold, his amber eyes hooded by half-lowered lids. “I think you will find, Vincent, that I am better prepared this time.”

“Then you must be prepared for death,” Vincent responded with silky softness.

Balstone’s lips pulled back in an ugly sneer. “So you’ve come to regret the little act of generosity.”

“Infinitely. Choosing the sword thrust which allowed you to live brought about Thomas’s death, and that is a guilt I do not bear easily.”

“Perhaps we shall remove your guilt tonight.” The Viscount detached himself from the shadowed doorway.

Antiqua gasped at the sudden glimmer of candlelight over the steel of blades.

Vincent remained impassive, remarking only, “You did indeed come prepared.”

What passed for a smile crossed Balstone’s face. “The ancestral hall has at last been worth something to me. I had these beauties from above the mantel in the Great Hall.” He laid the twin foils across the top of the dusty buffet.

“Forgive my curiosity, William, but what have you done with my brother and my servant?” Vincent spoke lightly, but Antiqua could feel the tension radiate from his tensed form.

“Fraternal concern?” Balstone mocked.

“If you wish.”

The Viscount’s laugh was mirthless. “I merely helped them to a short nap. Absurdly easy to knock them both out from behind, then bind them together. What I shall do with them later, particularly with the pretty Marquis, is something I have not yet given myself the pleasure of deciding.”

The menace in his jeering tone sent a shiver through Antiqua’s innermost depths. Vincent looked down at her, intensely scanning her face. Then he firmly set her aside and wordlessly began to prepare.

He stripped his velvet jacket from his shoulders and with one yank removed his cravat. After carelessly tossing these articles away, he perched on a chair’s edge and pulled his feet free of his hightop boots.

With the same grim determination, Balstone shed his restrictive cloak and jacket, folding them over the back of Antiqua’s wooden chair, then set about tugging off a pair of elegantly champagned boots.

Numbly, Antiqua watched these deadly preparations. She longed to scream out a protest, to beg them to leave off, but she knew such an action would not only be utterly futile, but would also result in her instant banishment from the room. Above all, she knew she must remain to see the adventure played out to its inevitable conclusion.

In one act of fateful togetherness, the two enemies pushed the few pieces of furniture against the walls. With dreamlike clarity, Antiqua focused on the Viscount as he kicked the pewter bowl into a corner. Vincent, meanwhile, plucked up a rapier from the buffet. He stretched out an arm, testing its weight and balance. The other weapon was taken up by Balstone.

“Ironic, is it not?” he queried with a faint laugh as he faced Vincent. “That you and I should meet again for such a cause—for the Bonapartist fools and their fatuous dreams?”

“Was the other any better?” Vincent asked.

“More noble, perhaps,” Balstone replied. Quite conversationally, he went on, “It astounded me, you know, Jack, to discover that you did indeed love Susannah. Your challenged shocked no one so much as I, for I’d always rather fancied you ran off with her all that time ago simple to spite me.”

“Not to spite you, William.” Vincent studied the tip of his foil, then brought his gaze to meet Balstone’s. “Only to save Susannah from her own folly. Despite everything, she loved you.”

The intake of breath was audible. Slowly, Balstone released the draught of air. “But she chose your wealth.”

“Only because I convinced her that you did not care.”

“Damn you, I loved her!”

“You, William have never loved anyone but yourself. In time, you’d have destroyed her.”

The room rocked with hostile silence. Antiqua caught her breath at the hatred the two men bared, and took a faltering step back to lean against the supportive wall. Her movement caught the men’s attention. Balstone’s gaze raked over her with a leer.

“Perhaps, then, the lovely Miss Greybill can teach me otherwise,” he mocked. “To the victor shall go the spoils, eh, Vincent?”

At that, Vincent straightened and raised his rapier in an age-old salute. In tense fascination, Antiqua watched as the Viscount answered that salute and she knew a wild urge to call out for Fawkes, for Archie, for
someone
to come put an end to this madness. Then all thoughts were driven from her as her ears reverberated with the first sharp ring of blade crossing blade.

For a time only the scuff of their stockinged feet upon the bare floor and the rasp of the converging foils sounded within the room. But even the smallest noise echoed loudly, as if amplified by the drumbeat of death.

Wide-eyed, Antiqua followed the rapid thrust and parry, willing herself not to cry out each time the large man drove his point perilously close to Vincent, sighing with relief each time that point was neatly turned aside.

Suddenly, Vincent smiled. “You have practiced . . . since we last met,” he said between breaths.

Balstone replied with his cat’s smile. “With this moment in mind.”