Priceless (11 page)

“I still can’t believe…” But Bronwyn could almost believe. It explained so much. Adam’s fury when he’d met her. His willingness to take her for the prestige of her family. Even his lack of pity for the noble family whose lands he had bought. A man who had nothing, not even a reputation, would hardly pity a nobleman who’d had everything and thrown it away.

Covering her eyes, Bronwyn said, “I can’t see him.”

Rachelle’s mouth twisted in pity, and her brown eyes shone with comprehension. Prying Bronwyn’s hands away from her face, she said, “Are you a child who believes such behavior renders you invisible? He will see you.” Bronwyn started to protest, but Rachelle lifted one finger. “You cannot hide in this room forever. He will see you. But if you will listen to me, he will never notice who you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trust me.” Rachelle rolled up her sleeves. “We begin at once.”

“Where is she?” Adam tried to get out of bed; he wanted
to put his hands around Olivia’s white throat and rattle her until she spoke.

“Son, the doctor said you’d be well with a few days bed rest.” Mab pressed him back on his pillows. “As long as you stay in bed.”

He glared at the assemblage. Still in their travel clothes, Lord Gaynor and Lady Nora paced or fretted as befitting their respective natures. Olivia sat on a chair, twisting her hands. Mab hovered over him as if she’d catch him should he try to escape.

All through the night he’d tossed with pain and fury. He’d been right at the first. Bronwyn was nothing but an unattractive spinster. How could he have thought he wanted to marry her? He’d been seduced by a lively mind, a lovely smile, a pert curiosity. But at the same time, he wanted her back. He wanted to love her, show her what she was giving up, make her beg to wed him. His contrary emotions made his head whirl, and he insisted, “Damn it, I want to know where she is.”

Lord Gaynor thrust his hand toward Adam to stop him. Kneeling before Olivia as if she were a child, he coaxed, “Come, tell us. Where do you think Bronwyn is?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Olivia faltered.

“Yes?” Lord Gaynor encouraged.

Biting her lip, she said, “She said she wanted to live away from society, away from men. I don’t know…I thought maybe…”

“Maybe what?” Adam roared.

She jumped, but his anger seemed to galvanize her, and she said defiantly, “I thought maybe she wanted to go to a convent.”

No one spoke. No one moved. Every eye in the room rested on Olivia in frozen horror.

The wind had been knocked from Adam, seizing his reason. Bronwyn? His plain little fiancée, with her hidden repository of passion, of humor, in a convent? It wasn’t possible.

“A convent?” Lord Gaynor whispered at last. “No, lass, tell me it’s not true.”

Olivia stared down at her own hands. “But, Da, you remember how much she enjoyed working at the convent in Ireland. She spent hours with their books, and talking to Brother Brendan when he visited.”

Toe tapping, Lady Nora snapped, “That was one of the reasons we moved you girls to England. You were getting too attached to the Papist customs, and that would have been fatal to our aspirations.”

The voice of reason, Mab interceded. “Bronwyn and I spoke many times about many things, and I never saw any evidence of such a vocation. What would cause such a change of heart?”

Olivia blushed and hung her head, her color all the more pronounced in her fair skin.

Regaining his voice, Adam asked, “Mab, did you tell Bronwyn about my father?” Mab shook her head. “Did you, Lord Gaynor? Lady Nora?” They denied it, and he fixed Olivia with a look that stripped her to the bone. “Did Bronwyn know about my father?”

Too frightened to speak, Olivia shook her head.

“Then this convent theory is the stupidest I have ever heard,” Adam pronounced.

Olivia looked up, eyes flashing with some of the fire he’d come to associate with Bronwyn. “I don’t know, with any certainty, why she’d want to join a convent. All I know is—Lord Rawson kissed her.”

He bounded up under the sting of insult and betrayal and hardly noticed the pain. “She told you, did she? Well, I tell you this. When I get her in my bed, I’ll do a damn sight more than kiss her.”

“Wait.” Lady Nora held up one long, white hand. “It seems we’re making too much of this. Bronwyn is not irreplaceable. We have two daughters of marriageable age.”

“What?” The cry broke from every throat.

“Maman, no,” Olivia whispered.

Every gaze accused Lady Nora of coldness, and she hastened to smooth the ruffled feathers. “Of course I’m concerned about Bronwyn. She’s my beloved daughter. But I’m also concerned that this alliance between our houses not be jeopardized.”

“Just what she planned,” Adam muttered. Every gaze turned on him, and he realized it was the truth. Bronwyn had planned this. What had she said? That fiancées were easily replaced. Her defection lashed at his pride, at his newly discovered emotions. Emotions he would now relegate to their proper place in his life. Emotions he could starve for lack of nutrition. “Do I understand you correctly? You are suggesting a betrothal between Olivia and me?”

Lady Nora shrank back from the fire of his demand. “Well, I…yes.”

Seeking to slacken her discomfort, he smiled, but it didn’t seem to ease the tension in the room. “An excellent idea. Have my new secretary write up the contract. I will sign it today. I do not understand how I ever imagined an impetuous young woman like Bronwyn would be a suitable mate for a man as cold as I.”

“My dear, from the first moment I saw you, my fingers have itched to redesign you.” Rachelle stepped from in front of the mirror and pushed Bronwyn forward. “Look.”

Bronwyn looked but saw no one she knew.

Then, with a start, she did. It was Bronwyn in the mirror, but no Bronwyn she’d ever seen before. Her hair hung loose, a tangle of unsubdued curls, tied in a ribbon at the back of her head. Its pale blond color accented the tan on her face and made her appear foreign. Rachelle’s charcoal wand had darkened her lashes, and they swept around eyes that sparkled with the flavor of the exotic. Her cheeks flushed peach. Her mouth was colored, vivid, showing off the lips her mother complained were too wide. A borrowed emerald-green dress, devoid of decoration, brought length to her body, slimming it until she suspected she would sway like a reed in the wind. In a dream, she reached out a hand to herself. “Rachelle, I’m beautiful.”

“So you are.”

“I’ve never seen myself like this.” Bronwyn pursed her lips, wiggled her brows. Convinced that woman in the mirror was really Bronwyn Edana, she asked, “Didn’t my mother know?”

“How could she?” Rachelle produced a Gallic shrug. “She is English.”

“Do you think I’m as pretty as my sisters?”

Perceiving the deep insecurity underlying the question, Rachelle replied patiently, “Your sisters are all women cut from the same stamp. If a man cannot have one of them, he will be satisfied with another. You are unique.”

Bronwyn turned with a laughing face. “Is that a tactful way to tell me no?”

Brushing a lock of hair away from Bronwyn’s face, Rachelle said, “It is the only way I can think to tell you that there is no comparison.”

“My hair.” Bronwyn touched it with shy fingers, afraid it would somehow disappear. “Can I wear it loose like this? Won’t the matrons whisper I look ready to bed?”

“And the gentlemen, too, I vow.” Rachelle pulled one lock over Bronwyn’s shoulder. “All will be mad with envy, and you will start a new fashion. We will call you ‘Cherie,’ and you will be the toast of London.”

“I can’t wait to be seen.” Lifting her arms, Bronwyn twirled in a circle.

“You are in for a shock.”

Bronwyn halted. “Why?”

“All your life, you have been recognized as an intelligent woman. Perhaps the men were not enticed by it, but they respected it.” Rachelle took her charcoal pencil and touched Bronwyn’s brows. “The more attractive a woman is, the less a man thinks of her intellect.”

“You mean they’ll think I’m stupid?”

“
Oui
.” Rachelle studied the results and turned Bronwyn back to the mirror. As Bronwyn preened, Rachelle said, “When in truth, it is quite the opposite. An attractive woman makes a man stupid.”

Bronwyn paid no attention to Rachelle. “When Adam comes, I’ll demonstrate my independence to him. I’ll make him sorry he thought I was ugly. I’ll make him squirm.”

Rachelle interrupted her gloating. “Why do you care what he thinks?”

Meeting Rachelle’s eyes in the mirror, Bronwyn flushed miserably and looked away.

“My invitation to stay with me remains open,” Rachelle said gently, “but it grieves me it is being used as a refuge against love.”

“I don’t want rest,” Adam roared. “I just want my walking stick.”

Suffering as only a servant caught between the mill and the stone could suffer, the footman said, “Lady Mab says I must help you to the couch. She says you’ve been working too much and are in pain. She says—”

“My mother is a—”

From the doorway of his study, Mab said, “Your mother knows where Bronwyn is, and if you’ll stop acting like an ass, she’ll tell you.”

Adam halted in midroar, his hand frozen in an uplifted position, his head thrown back. Slowly he pivoted to face his mother. “Mab?”

She settled onto a chair beside the couch, her needlework in her hands, ignoring his most charming smile.

Waving the servant out of the room, he interrogated, “Where is she? Is she in a convent? Is she taking her vows?” Mab unrolled her canvas and separated her threads, and Adam cursed aloud.

For four weeks he had sought the missing girl. Not because it concerned him, of course, but because her parents were worried. Now, he would indulge his mother by resting this wretched leg that so persistently pained him. Leaving his desk, he limped over to ease himself onto the couch.

She observed him as he placed his foot up. “If you hadn’t tried to chase after her the day you fell, you wouldn’t still be suffering.”

“To say ‘I told you so’ is most unattractive.” Her gentle smile graced him, and he whispered, “Where is she?”

“Why should I tell you? So you can go shout at her until she knows she did the right thing by fleeing this accursed prearranged marriage?” He opened his mouth to object, but she waggled that motherly finger, and he subsided. “You never wanted to hear what I thought of your grand plan to return respectability to our family, but you’ll hear it now.”

Subsiding onto the pillows, he rested on his spine, tucked his chin down on his chest, and thrust his hands into his pockets.

“How sulky you look,” she observed. “Like a child about to be scolded.”

He wiggled his shiny boots and stared at them. “Aren’t I?”

She ignored his pique as she ignored his impatience. “Adam, this honor you hold so dear is of a lesser importance. It’s the family that matters. You are my son, the only person in this world who has ever loved me. Like any mother, I cherish a dream for your future. I want you to be happy. For you, I dream of a wife who treasures you for yourself, not for your money. I dream of a wife picked not for her breeding ability or her fine lineage.”

He’d been too impatient to allow his valet to shave him this last week, and he rubbed his fingers across his chin. “What are you saying? You want me to marry her, don’t you?”

“I want you to marry Bronwyn. I don’t want you to marry Olivia.”

Under her gaze, so similar to his own, he complained, “Bronwyn left me. Doesn’t she realize the favor I’d done by agreeing to marry her?”

Mab rubbed her eyes, looked at her son, rubbed her eyes again. To no one in particular, she said, “It doesn’t appear to be the prince of dreams sitting on that bed. It appears to be Adam, but perhaps my vision is at fault.”

He sighed.

“You’ve become conceited,” she admonished.

“I have not. It’s just Bronwyn is so—” He was going to say homely, but he’d imagined her stripped of her clothing, and he knew she would be fatally alluring.

“Olivia is no woman for you,” Mab said. “She’ll melt like slush beneath a carriage wheel the first time you scowl at her. Already she scurries into a corner every time you approach.”

“I know. Olivia will never do.”

“Bronwyn fulfills your requirements, and she fulfills my requirements, also. She’s a fine girl, with a swift mind and
a generous heart. Even you, for all your smug blindness, have realized that.”

Adam rubbed his hand through his hair, torturing the black swirls. “Yes, I’ve realized it. But my father—”

“Your father has nothing to do with this.” Mab leaned toward him in earnest appeal. “He wasted a plentiful fortune, abandoned us to the wolves, brought us from an estate to a cottage, but what difference does that make? You and I were happy in that cottage, boy, and he was never happy for all his spendthrift ways.”

“He brought you to the workhouse,” he said, savage in his bitterness.

“You found me.”

“Barely in time.” He swung his legs down and braced himself against the floor. “I have got the money. Now I want the respect.”

Placing her veined hand across her forehead, Mab snorted in disbelief. “And you care?”

“Not for myself. But my children will have only the best. The name of Keane will have no blot on it. That’s my plan, and it’s never wavered.”

“Never wavered, but one small woman may destroy it.” She smiled slyly. “You
could
marry Olivia.”

Coldly, he denied the beautiful Edana daughter. “No, I can see now she will not do. I want Bronwyn back. Will you help me?”

Mab shook her head before he finished speaking. “Absolutely not.”

She wouldn’t compromise, he knew. Mab sought his cooperation, his sworn word, and he would give it. He would give it because he could never deny his mother and because he had no desire to court Olivia as he had Bronwyn. After all, he reasoned, he’d already made the effort for Bronwyn; why waste his time with Olivia? He sat forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. “Where is she, Mab? I’ll do as you wish. I’ll be a
true husband, not treat her as a woman bought with worldly goods. I’ll stay in her bed at night and keep her company by day.”

“You should be weaving your spells around Bronwyn.”

She reproved him, but he knew she’d heard what she wanted. He coaxed, “I will, as soon as you tell me where she is.”

“She’s living at Madame Rachelle’s salon.”

He didn’t move, didn’t blink.

“I was afraid you’d react in such a manner.” She lifted her canvas and stabbed her needle into the midst of the flowers, showing too clearly her disgust with her son.

“Madame Rachelle’s.” He ran his fingers over his lips. “I’m relieved, I suppose. That’s better than a convent. How did she find Madame Rachelle’s?”

“You’ll have to ask her that.”

Speaking more to himself than to her, he said, “I should have thought of it myself. Where else would an intelligent, gently bred woman go?”

“Not to you, prince of dreams.” She put down her sewing to watch his face. “This is a difficult, awkward situation, but I know you, Adam. You’ll treasure Bronwyn all the more for the effort you’ll put forth.”