My Surrender (15 page)

Hamstead House, Bedford Square
July 30, 1806

“A
ND SO OUR PLAY DRAWS TO ITS CLOSE,”
Dand said as the rented carriage rumbled toward the Countess Hamstead’s mansion.

The invitation had been sent and accepted well before Charlotte’s fall from grace, and as Countess Hamstead herself enjoyed a somewhat checkered past, she had made no attempt to disown the invitation. Or perhaps she had assumed that Charlotte still possessed enough nicety of feeling to prevent her from embarrassing both her hostess and herself by arriving.

Alas, Countess Hamstead, Charlotte thought, your rout provides simply too perfect a stage to pass up.

She shifted and the paste diamonds she’d borrowed from Ginny glimmered in the murky light, the deep inky blue velvet of her cape dissolving into the shadows while her bosom glowed as pale as a dove’s breast above the daring décolletage.

She felt calm, composed, sure of herself. No nerves. No unease. Just a tiny bit of impatience that the next act be finished. In the opposite corner from where she sat, Dand silently lounged. After tonight, they would part ways. He would go back to France and she…to Scotland.

The carriage rocked to a halt, caught in the crush of traffic moving at a snail’s pace along the boulevard leading to the Hamstead mansion. He was silent for a long moment, even his gloved hands, white against the severe darkness of his evening dress, were motionless where they rested on the silver top of his walking stick. She sensed his ease slip away. She could almost feel the intensity of his gaze.

“Are you quite ready for this evening?” he asked as the carriage started up again.

“I am,” she replied. “And you?”

“Oh, most definitely. Though I still don’t see why I have to be the one to be given the old heave-ho.”

He was offering her a distraction, she realized. Gladly she took it. “We have discussed this at length. St. Lyon must think I am not some pitiful young girl, but an unsentimental opportunist. One looking for a richer and more generous protector.”

“I suppose it makes sense. But I warn you that my masculine pride may never fully recover from the insult you intend to deal it tonight.”

“And I make haste to reassure you that it is not the weight you carry in your breeches but the one you carry in your purse that will be called into question.”

“Dear me, Lottie.” Dand drew back, shocked. “How exceedingly gamy.”

“Wasn’t it, though?” she replied complacently. “I have been practicing such lines all evening. Ginny has been sharing the most delicious insights with me.”

“I should hate to imagine,” he said dryly.

“There is no sense in ruining myself in a halfhearted sort of way.
I
shall ruin myself with panache.” She smiled and hoped she at least looked gallant. She would like to end this conversation with Dand secure in the belief that she could carry off her part in tonight’s performance with aplomb. “Or at least humor.”

“How I will miss you, Lottie,” he murmured. “I have truly enjoyed these days together.”

“As have I,” Charlotte returned graciously so that he would not suspect the full extent of the truth she had just uttered. Those hours they had spent closeted together meant a great deal more to her than she was willing to admit. Even to herself. And those hours when their roles required him to flirt with her, to touch her, she would miss even more.

Dand’s endearments made her limbs weak. Dand’s ardent gazes made her pulse race. Dand’s whisper-light caresses made her catch her breath. And Dand’s kiss…? Enough to make a more foolish girl, a greener girl, a more romantic girl than she, lay awake at night and wonder where such kisses ultimately led and despair that she would never find out.

Luckily, she was not that girl.

Still, she thought with an abrupt return of the irreverence and audacity she had rediscovered upon reading Kate’s letter, what with all the sacrifices she had been making of late, she ought to have a safe-conduct to the head of the queue when the time came for her to stand at the Pearly Gates.

The carriage drew to a halt. She pulled back the curtain and stared up at the flight of broad marble steps leading to the open double doors brilliantly lit at their top. Footmen stood in a line on either side of the doorway, receiving the guests that flowed like a spangled river up from the street.

“This…is insanity,” Dand uttered softly. Even in the darkness she could make out his crooked smile.

“So you’ve repeatedly told me,” she said but without rancor. They were too far along now to cry off and they both knew it.

“It was not supposed to happen,” he murmured. “Madness.”

“Mad horse,” Charlotte corrected, thinking of the carriage that had struck down Ginny and so profoundly altered her own destiny. “I wonder what spooked it? There is undoubtedly a lesson there: The best laid plans can be laid to waste because of a scrap of paper, a boy’s peashooter, or a slinking cat.”

“Yes.” Dand’s voice trailed off. There was a long moment of silence and then with exaggerated gallantry, he said, “Whilst I have the opportunity to do so, let me commend you on your performance these last few weeks.”

He sounded like an admiring fellow professional applauding his cohort’s performance before the closing night’s final act. “Thank you. And I, yours. And now, I suppose we’d best get on with it?”

“Yes.”

Neither of them moved.

“Lottie.”

“Yes?”

“You know I am to return to France in a few days.”

“Yes. Pray, be careful.”

“Yes, yes.” He brushed away her worries, “But…what I wanted to say is…You know that after tonight I can’t come to the house. And if we chance upon one another in some public place, you must give me the cut direct.”

“I understand. Having decided my future lay elsewhere, no looking back over my shoulder.”

“Exactly.” She saw the flash of his white teeth and her heart turned over. “So this is the last time we will talk for a while.”

A great while.
And when they saw one another again everything would have changed.

“But,” he went on, “if you should need me in the next few days, I’ll have taken rooms in Bedford Square. Afterward, at any time afterward, you have only to contact Father Tarkin in order to find me. He will know how to reach me.”

His concern touched her and she covered her emotions with a bright smile and a little shake of her head. “Should I send a yellow rose, too? If it’s in season, that is?”

When he didn’t reply, she reached out and lightly touched his hand. “Oh, Dand. Let us be done with your oath so you can cease looking all grimly resolved and spending heaven knows how many of your future years waiting in dread anticipation for the arrival of a flower.”

She sat back, smiling gallantly. “Here then is my official word: I, Charlotte Nash, hereby release you from your pledge.”

“It is not for you to release me, Lottie,” he said, his quiet voice filling the darkness. “Only my heart can judge when I have paid my debt.”

“Poor heart,” she whispered.

“Constant though, pitiful thing,” he agreed and suddenly leaned forward reaching across the short distance separating them and touched her cheek lightly with the very tips of his fingers.

Damn him anyway! She told him so often that he had to wear gloves. He always forgot and now the electricity of his bare touch set her eyelids drifting shut on a wave of longing.

“Darlin’ Lottie,” he murmured softly, “if ever you have need of me, call for me and I will come to you.” His fingers skated down her cheek to the side of her neck and curled lightly behind, combing through the short curls at the nape of her neck to cup her head. He drew closer, his breath was soft with the scent of brandy and warm in the closed carriage and she heard her heartbeat because she’d stopped breathing.

“Should you require anything of me, anything at all, no night will be too dark, no road too long, no ocean wide enough, nor any king’s army great enough, to keep me from doing your bidding or dying in the attempt.”

Her heart leapt at the suddenly vibrant tones, the dark power of his words and she wanted—my Lord, how she
desired!
—to believe there was something more than honor here. Something deeper than sheer, obstinate nobility.

His mouth touched hers, a bittersweet kiss unlike any they’d shared, gentle and yearning and just as he lifted his hands to capture her face between them and deepen it, the carriage rattled to a halt and swayed as the driver jumped to the ground. Reluctantly he released her and sank back in his seat, his eyes gleaming in the semidarkness.

“And,” he said in a low, throbbing voice as the door swung open, “I will need no bloody rose to guide me to you.”

“Told her she’d be making a spectacle of herself,” Monsieur Andre Rousse declared loudly, but to whom it was unclear. Several near him turned at his loud, slightly slurred declaration.

“Can only believe that’s what she wants. And what is that, you might ask yourself?” he snarled, his wild-eyed gaze riveted on the object of his treatise. “I’ll tell you. Any woman who appears in public in such a state of undress does so in anticipation of hanging from more men’s necks than a secondhand cravat!”

Not since the great actors Sarah Siddons and John Kemble had last appeared together on the stage over two decades earlier had the ton enjoyed such a spectacle. A hush fell over the crush that had formed in the foyer leading to the Hamstead dining tables. Heads swiveled, lips stilled, breaths held.

The tall, handsome Frenchman, Monsieur Rousse, having spied his paramour, Charlotte Nash, bellowed the words at her as she stood flirtatiously tapping her folded fan against the chest of a besotted-looking knight. Upon hearing the vile accusation, the lady turned as pale as her gold tissue gown—which honesty compelled any objective viewer to admit was fashioned in such a manner as to leave little to the imagination as to what charms lay beneath the thin gauze. Derisive dames would later scathingly declare that the gown had been moistened to better cling to what all must admit was indeed a spectacular figure.

Slowly, the ginger-haired vixen turned and leveled her catlike eyes on the man all Society assumed was her lover. “A secondhand cravat? Yet another thing you can ill afford, Rousse?”

The push toward the doors ceased altogether. The current scene had been building all evening. Monsieur Rousse—whom nobody knew, yet everyone knew
of
—had entered with Charlotte Nash on his arm, ignoring the titters of amazement and hisses of disapproval that followed. Miss Nash had abandoned him at once, and he had proceeded to drink himself into a state one old general had admiringly admitted would have seen him—and he a three-bottle man—on his face.

Contrarily, Miss Nash contented herself by flirting in the most outrageous manner possible with any man who did not shun her company, which, several wise old matrons pointed out, was a far greater number than various wives, mothers, and sweethearts would have liked.

Rousse had watched her sport with a black-eyed glare as he tipped glass after glass of port down his throat, ignoring the come-hither glances from the more adventurous matrons who in their midnight confession or hastily scribbled journals admitted to understanding—in a purely conjectural sense—why someone as flighty and passionate as Charlotte Nash had ruined herself upon him.

But when Charlotte leaned forward and whispered something that caused a moon-eyed youngster, and heir to a vast and vastly vulgar trade, to go scarlet with pleasure, Rousse had stormed across the room and snatched her away, pulling her into a small closet. For the next ten moments pacifying murmurs and sporadic roars of outrage could be heard from its interior. However, whatever balm Miss Nash had used to attempt to soothe her beastly lover had apparently failed. He emerged from the closet with a curse on his lips and the devil in his eye. A few minutes later Miss Nash appeared, sighing with annoyance before returning to her winsome ways.

That had been two hours ago.

Now, with a savage sound, Rousse was pushing his way through the throng with the apparent intent of doing bodily harm to Miss Nash’s person! He got to within a dozen feet of the girl who stood with an imperious look of disdain before several gentlemen, fearing the worst, laid hold of him.

He thrashed angrily in their grip. “Let me go. Release me, you devils! Unless you poor wretches are in her thrall, too!”

“Let him go,” drawled Miss Nash with a derisive flick of her hand. “He will never leave until he has made an exhibition of himself.”

Reluctantly, the gentlemen released Rousse’s arms. His fine eyes lost their wild glare and he moved past the last few people separating him from his quarry until he stood before her, shuddering with emotion.

“Yes, Rousse?” she inquired in a bored voice. “What further remonstrations must you make? Pray be quick about it, though. A quadrille is forming, and I do love a quadrille.”

“You are cruel.”

“If refusing to perpetuate an uncomfortable delusion is cruel, then I confess my guilt.”

“Heartless trollop! I would have worshipped you!”

A little smile tilted her lips. “Then I have saved your soul from certain sacrilege and you should be thanking me for bidding you adieu. And I
am,”
she continued in stony tones, “bidding you adieu.”

And with that she started to turn away. But by now Rousse was in the throes of an agony one could only guess at and fervently hope never to have to endure. His face was terrible—wretched and despairing and furious. He seized her arm as she passed. Without a hitch, she swung around. The sound of her gloved palm striking his cheek resonated over the mesmerized crowd.

He dropped her arm, stunned, drunk, mortified.

“And now that you have humiliated us both, perhaps you would be good enough to leave?” Her voice had lost its chill indifference. For the first time, she sounded overset. Her eyes gleamed with what might have been tears.

For a long moment they stood staring at one another, emotions playing across Miss Nash’s face that no one, not even the most opinionated termagant, could interpret. And then with a bow—quite a good bow for one so well in the boughs—Rousse made an elegant leg and whispered softly, “Your servant, ma’am. Your slave.”