Slightly Sinful (17 page)

"Please," Alleyne said. "But you understand, do you not, that my marriage to Miss York is an entirely fictitious one?"

"What I understand, sir," Strickland said, "is that you have undertaken to be the lady's husband and protector, whether for real or not, and that since you are a gentleman and a gentleman don't end connections like that unless the lady does it for him, it is not really just pretend at all. You've done what is right and proper after she got a headache here last night and took out all her hairpins. The next step is up to her now, isn't it? About whether she wants it to be real or not once your memory comes back and you know you are not a married man, I mean."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Alleyne said curtly, noting as his new valet removed the bandage and prepared to wrap it more securely about his thigh that despite some swelling and the pain it had caused, the wound itself was healing quite nicely. "I really needed that lecture on my gentlemanly obligations."

"No, you did not, sir," Strickland said. "I just talk too much. No putridity here, is there? You will be as right as rain in another week or two, though I daresay there is more to heal up on the inside than shows on the outside."

Alleyne looked consideringly at the sergeant as the man straightened up, his task completed. "How willing would you be, Strickland, to lend me half of the money you have?" he asked.

The sergeant stood smartly to attention and spoke without hesitation.

"I been trying to think of a way of offering you some of it, sir, without offending you, though it isn't so much," he said. "A gentleman ought to have funds, oughtn't he? It wouldn't be right for him to be waiting for the ladies to open their purses for every glass of ale he fancies to slake his thirst. But it don't need to be a loan. You can have some and welcome to it. I got plenty."

"But a loan it will be nevertheless," Alleyne said firmly. "And a very temporary one, I hope. What do you know of Brussels? Were you posted here before the Battle of Waterloo? Do you know the establishments a man would go to in order to play deep? Apart from here, I mean."

"Cards?" The sergeant was helping Alleyne out of the rest of his clothes and then helping him on with his nightshirt. "I know one or two places, sir, though they are not the ones the real nobs like you would go to."

"It does not matter," Alleyne said. The chance that he might be recognized if he went somewhere frequented by the upper classes, though appealing in one way, might only complicate matters now that he had agreed to go to England with Rachel York. "Just direct me to one you know."

"You are going to play, sir?" Strickland asked, sliding a spare pillow beneath Alleyne's knee and giving him instant ease. "Are you sure you remember how?"

"Memory loss is a strange thing," Alleyne said. "At least my memory loss is. All appears to have remained to me except the details relating to my personal identity."

"And you was lucky in cards, was you, sir?" the sergeant asked him.

"I have no idea," Alleyne admitted. "But I must hope so. If not, it is going to be a horribly impoverished gentleman and his wife who will be arriving at Chesbury Park a short while from now. And I am going to be embarrassingly deep in your debt as well as that of the ladies here."

"You have been lucky in love, though," the sergeant said cheerfully, apparently determined to believe that the marriage was soon to be real and a love match to boot. "We will take that as a good omen, sir. I will find out which establishment is the best for you to go to. Things may have changed a bit since the battle. I'll even go with you if I may, sir. To keep an eye on you, like, in case anyone should try some rough stuff, which I don't in no way expect. And to try my own luck too."

"Done," Alleyne said. "I am to be consigned to darkness and sleep this early, am I?"

The sergeant was blowing out the candles and preparing to leave the room.

"You are tired, sir," Strickland told him. "Miss York told me so, though I would have known it for myself."

And so he was stranded in bed and in darkness at an hour when he supposed most of his peers were just sallying forth for an evening's revelries, Alleyne thought. He wished he could remember just one occasion when he had done so. He wished he could tease just one memory past that heavy curtain that hung so relentlessly in front of his mind. Just one-and then they would all come flooding out, he was sure.

But having no memories with which to regale himself while he sought sleep, he found his mind slipping back over the past few hours.

Soon he was chuckling softly to himself.

CHAPTER X

R ACHEL DOUBTED SHE WOULD RECOGNIZE her uncle when she finally saw him again. She had not seen him since she was six years old. At the time he had seemed tall and broad and rock solid, dependable and good humored. But those memories had soon grown sour.

The carriage jolted through a rut in the road, sending up a spray of mud though the rain had stopped an hour ago, and one of her knees touched one of Jonathan Smith's across the small space between their seats. It was the knee of his good leg, fortunately, though the other one had healed rapidly during the two and a half weeks since he had acquired crutches. He was able to put some weight on it now, though he still made use of a stout cane when he walked.

She moved her own leg hastily, and her eyes met his before moving away on the pretense that she was interested in the scenery beyond the window. They had both lived up to the agreement they had made the evening after he had suggested this masquerade. They had scarcely touched each other, scarcely been alone together, scarcely exchanged a private word with each other.

As a result, far from being more comfortable in his presence, she was quite the opposite. She kept feeling incredulous about the events of that infamous evening. It could not possibly have happened. She must have dreamed it. But then she would have vivid and lurid images of herself, of him, of them, and she would want to go and jump into the nearest pond to hide herself and cool her cheeks.

It did not help that every day he was stronger and more healthy and more handsome and more masculine and more-oh, and more everything.

In a million years, she thought, catching hold of the leather strap above her shoulder as the carriage swayed over another rut, she could not have predicted that her life would take this turn. It was just too, too bizarre.

The jolting had woken Bridget from a doze. She sat up and straightened her bonnet.

"I almost fell asleep," she said.

"I do like the way you look, Bridget," Rachel told her.

"It's because I resemble a staid matron, my love," Bridget said ruefully.

"It is because you look like my beloved nurse again." Rachel squeezed her arm.

Flossie, Phyllis, and Geraldine were riding in the carriage behind with Sergeant Strickland. All four ladies had shed their bright plumage before leaving Brussels and were dressed with almost comical respectability. Bridget, her face shiny with cleanliness, her hair a suspiciously uniform shade of mouse, looked like her dear old self. She also looked younger, though she probably would not have admitted as much herself.

Jonathan was also looking smarter and more elegant than any gentleman had a right to look. He had expensive new clothes. He had money.

Where he had acquired it she did not know, though of course it did not take any great intellectual effort to guess how he had got it. He had gone out a couple of times with Sergeant Strickland, and the second time he had come back with a new trunk and new clothes and boots and a cane-as well as with lavish amounts of food for the house. He had even paid for his own passage to England and hers too, though she had every intention of paying him back once she had her jewels and had sold a few of them. And he was the one who had hired the carriages and horses here in England.

If he had been a gambler in his past life, he obviously had lost none of his touch. He must have won a vast sum.

If there was one class of gentleman Rachel despised more than any other, it was the gamer. Her father had been one. It was a very good thing she had not conceived a passion for Jonathan Smith and that their marriage was not a real one. Gamers did not make responsible husbands or providers-and that was a colossal understatement. There were moments of overflowing plenty and giddy extravagance, but there were weeks and months and even years of scrounging poverty and skulking debt.

He had other weaknesses of character too, of course. What other gentleman would have dreamed up and actually implemented a scheme like this? Or thrown himself into it with such enthusiasm? He had discussed details for hours with her and her friends, and he had always looked as if he were enjoying himself enormously.

His eyes were handsome enough as they were, she thought resentfully, without the twinkle and the roguish gleam that so often set them alight. She looked at those eyes now to find that they were focused upon her.

"We should be there soon," he said.

At the last change of horses they had been assured that another would not be necessary. For a moment Rachel wished she were anywhere else on earth but close to Chesbury Park. Her stomach seemed intent upon turning a complete somersault inside her and she felt a few moments of raw panic.

What on earth was she doing?

But she was only going to get what was hers, what her mother had left for her. Anyway, it was too late to change the plan now, though from the way Jonathan was looking at her, she suspected that he knew she was very close to doing just that. His eyes smiled at her. And that was something else she resented. How could he make his eyes smile when the rest of his face did not? He must know how very attractive the expression made him look.

"Does the countryside look at all familiar to you?" she asked him.

"It is England," he said with a shrug. "I have not forgotten the country, Rachel, only my own place in it."

But she scarcely heard his answer. The carriage was turning between high wrought iron gates, and she realized that they had arrived at Chesbury Park.

A gravel driveway beyond the gates wound its way through a forest of old oak and chestnut trees. It all looked alarmingly huge and stately to Rachel. The audacity of what they were all doing struck her anew.

And then, gradually, there were glimpses through the trees of an imposing gray stone mansion, far grander than anything she had expected. This was where her mama had grown up? Where she had belonged? There were spacious, tree-dotted lawns about the house beyond the woods, she could see, and a large lake to the stable side of it. There was a long parterre garden stretching across the front of the house.

It was only as the carriage wheels crunched over the driveway while it proceeded along beside the lake and then turned sharply before the stable block and rumbled across the terrace that separated the house from the parterres that Rachel had the sudden thought that perhaps her uncle was from home.

What a dash to all their expectations that would be! She almost hoped that it would happen, except that they would all then find themselves stranded in the middle of Wiltshire, virtually penniless and without a plan.

Jonathan had leaned forward in his seat to set a hand on her knee.

"Steady," he said. "All will be well."

But she jumped with awareness and felt anything but steady.

The carriage rolled to a halt at the foot of a wide flight of stone steps that led up to the double front doors. They were fast shut, and no one came running outside to investigate the arrival of two strange traveling carriages. No groom came running from the stables. The coachman jumped down from the box, opened the door, and set down the steps. Warm, fresh summer air flooded the rather stuffy interior. Jonathan descended carefully and then braced his weight on his cane as he handed Rachel down.

The others were alighting from the second carriage, she could see. Geraldine and Sergeant Strickland stayed back beside the conveyance. Despite her plain gray dress and cloak and the voluminous cap she wore beneath a plain bonnet, Geraldine still looked like a voluptuous Italian actress. She also looked like someone other female servants would resent on sight and all their male counterparts would come to fisticuffs over. Sergeant Strickland, a black patch covering his empty eye socket, his facial bruises faded to a motley blend of sickly yellow and a pale gray, did indeed look like the ferocious pirate of Geraldine's predictions.

The other two came forward along the terrace while Jonathan was helping Bridget to alight. Phyllis looked like a complacent young matron who had never in her life entertained a naughty thought. Flossie, her blond hair tamed beneath her neat black bonnet, her shapely person encased in decent black, looked fragile and pretty and as respectable as a parson's wife.

"I still can't accustom myself to not having to squint every time I look at your hair, Bridge," Phyllis said.

"Pinch your cheeks, Rachel," Flossie advised. "You look as pale as a ghost."

Jonathan made her jump again then by taking her hand in his and drawing it through his arm. He smiled at her, his eyes warm and adoring.

"Let the game begin," he murmured.

"Yes." She smiled dazzlingly back at him.

He led her up the steps and rapped on one of the doors with the head of his cane. A whole minute passed-or so it seemed-before an elderly servant answered the knock. He looked from one to the other of them as if they had two heads apiece.