The Bachelor's Bargain (26 page)

Determined to discover at once the meaning of the letter, she debated whom to approach. Sir Alexander, of course, would know everything his brother had planned. But the thought of meeting privately with the young man held no satisfaction whatsoever. Anne knew she could expect insult from him at the very least, for his demeanor toward her had not changed since their encounter in the garden at Marston House. Sir Alexander considered his brother’s wife nothing better than a conniving little bedbug, and she knew she could never trust him.

Mr. Walker would know Ruel’s plans, as well. Anne decided she must find him at once and ask the meaning of the message. If anyone could be depended upon to speak the truth, it was the Indian. Anne drew a blue muslin pelisse over her white morning dress and hurried out into the corridor and down two flights of stairs to the library.

From that room she knew it was possible to see all the back garden, the kitchen garden, and part of the drive. If Mr. Walker were anywhere about the property, she probably could spot him through the library windows.

Anne pushed open the door and stepped into the room. Instantly she realized the window draperies had been drawn apart no more than half a foot, and a slender, silhouetted figure stood peering between them.

“Excuse me?” she said softly.

“Oh!” Prudence whirled around and dropped the curtains. She flushed bright red, as though she were a child caught with a finger in the pudding. “Anne, is it you?”

“Prudence? What are you doing at Marston House? Why was I not told of your arrival?”

The young woman exhaled. “I . . . I was simply . . . you see, I spoke with Sarah at breakfast this morning just before she went away in her carriage to make the rounds at Hyde Park. I told her . . . I said I thought I might stroll across the green to see . . . to speak to you.”

“Ah.” Anne studied the blushing girl and the hastily drawn curtains. “But somehow you were distracted from your mission?”

“I was indeed. The prospect from this window is very fine.”

“Yes, it is.” Anne walked toward the window. “I was just coming down to speak with someone myself. Have you seen Mr. Walker today?”

“The blacksmith? Perhaps he went away with the marquess to tour the country properties.”

Did everyone know
everything
about her personal business? Anne wondered. She had barely had time to read the note herself, yet Prudence already knew of its contents.

“I doubt Mr. Walker journeyed with my husband. A companion was not mentioned in a note to me.” Anne stepped to Prudence’s side. “Lord Blackthorne has written a most puzzling message. I should like you to read it, Prudence, but it is too dim in here to make out the words.”

As she took hold of the curtain, Anne suddenly realized she might find someone hiding behind it. Someone her friend very much did not want her to see. Someone tall and dark. Someone who had spoken of love in a corridor and had held a weeping woman in his arms.

It was too late for hesitation.

She grasped the curtain and pushed it aside. No one stood behind it.

Anne let out a breath of relief. What if Mr. Walker had been there? How dreadful to discover such a thing and then to be forced to confront the two of them. She must learn to be more circumspect.

Prudence scanned the note. “It appears quite sensible to me.”

“Aye, but what of the locked trunks and the mysterious clothing orders? And why does he write to me so lovingly when I have hardly had a kind word from him of late? I should very much like to speak to Mr. Walker, for I am sure he would know the meaning of it all. Perhaps he went for a stroll. My husband tells me he is partial to daily meanderings along the Serpentine.”

“Indeed, for Mr. Walker says the summer green of Hyde Park and the beauty of the river put him in mind of America,” Prudence said. “He grew up along the . . . oh!”

Catching herself, she clapped her hand over her mouth. Anne gazed into the olive green eyes and shook her head.

“Prudence, what have you been doing?”

“Mr. Walker speaks often of his homeland. I think he wishes to return there.”

“You are seeing him in secret,” Anne said. “You are going to France with our party because you wish to be near Mr. Walker, and you have . . .”

A sniffle stopped Anne’s words. Prudence had begun dabbing her eyes. A wisp of golden hair had escaped her bun and lay on her shoulder in disarray. Her shawl, a lovely scrap of lace with long fringes, dropped to the floor at her feet.

“Oh, Prudence.” Anne stepped forward and took her friend’s hands. “I should not have spoken to you so boldly. The affections between you and Mr. Walker are no business of mine. Please believe I never meant to cause you unhappiness.”

“You must not mind me.” Attempting a smile, Prudence tucked her handkerchief inside the hem of her sleeve. “I find things . . . difficult these days. So very difficult.”

“Have you and Mr. Walker formed an attachment?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He . . . he . . .” Her face crumpled again. “He will not have me. I feel I have finally found the only man I can ever love, and he is determined not to see me.”

“He is right to dissuade you, dearest. He is too old, too different, too many things that are very wrong for you.”

“Aye, and now . . . now he will go off with you and the marquess and . . .” She pulled out her handkerchief and blotted her cheeks. “. . . and Sir Alexander and pay me no heed. It is a great deal for me to bear.”

“You should stay in London, Prudence. Play with Mary’s baby girl and take tea with your sisters.” Anne squeezed the poor woman’s hands, all the while knowing exactly what Prudence intended to do. Her friend could no more turn away from the man she loved than Anne could prevent herself from thinking about Ruel day and night. But it would be a mistake for Prudence to join the party. Mr. Walker could never marry her, and they were smuggling lace machinery—

Lace machinery! That is what was in her trunks. Of course. How could she not have known at once? But how appalling to carry the disassembled loom in her own luggage! What if the parts were discovered by the authorities? Anne herself would be accused, of course. She would take all the blame.

But that must be the very reason she was to carry the equipment. The marquess would never risk allowing himself or his brother to be discovered smuggling. Were his common, ill-bred wife to be caught, Anne could fall to her doom with little discomfort to anyone. After all, her father was already in prison. Such intelligence could be put about Society as a perfect excuse for Anne’s illicit activity.
“Her father is a common
criminal, you know,”
she could hear them whispering. The marquess could cast her off as easily as a snake sheds its skin.

“You have gone quite pale, Anne,” Prudence said, touching her arm. “Do sit down and let me ring for tea. I am afraid I have upset you with my tears.”

“No, it is something I have just realized. Something . . . dreadful.”

“Has it to do with my accompanying you on your tour?” Prudence seated Anne in the leather sofa near the window and sat beside her. “I must go with you, you know. I have no reason to stay at home. Sarah and Mr. Locke are so much in love, and they have their tea enterprise and charitable ventures to oversee. Mary and Mr. Heathhill are besotted over their daughter and hardly talk of anything else. And I . . . well, I have nothing here. I must go with you. I know I can never truly have him, and I shall . . . I shall let him go.” She bit her lower lip and dabbed at her eyes. “I shall let him go, as I must. But not yet, Anne. Please, not yet.”

Anne watched in a daze as the sobbing woman did her best to dam the river of tears pouring down her cheeks. Prudence truly believed herself in love with Mr. Walker, though Anne was a bit skeptical. Prudence had always enjoyed scores of admirers, and Anne felt certain she would recover her senses in time. Anne had known her far too long to doubt it. Yes, Prudence was miserable, but Anne knew no one could possibly feel as terrible as she did at this moment. No passing affection for the latest in Prudence’s long line of beaux could compare to the reality that Ruel Chouteau, Marquess of Blackthorne, was perfectly willing to betray his own wife.

“I must go back to Trenton House,” Prudence whispered. “I should not have come here today.”

Anne put out her hand. “Are you well?”

“I am all right. And I shall behave myself on our journey. That is a promise.” She tucked her handkerchief away once again. “Thank you, Anne.”

As Prudence walked across the carpeted floor, slipped out of the library, and shut the tall door behind her, Anne lifted her eyes to the window. Rising, she leaned against the glass and studied the long rows of clipped hedges in the garden outside. Ruel really was the scoundrel Prudence insisted he was, and Anne must never forget it. Never mind his hypnotic kisses and teasing words. Never mind his warm hands and tender looks. He was a rogue with no more scruples than a common criminal—a man who would use his own wife to smuggle goods and then let her take the consequences if discovered.

Prudence, Sarah, and Mary would nod knowingly if they were ever to understand how correct they had been all along. Anne shook her head, then she stiffened in surprise when she saw her friend step out from behind a hedge onto a patch of green lawn in the garden beyond. The next instant she was joined by none other than Mr. Walker.

“Oh, Prudence!” Anne gasped.

Bonnet cast aside, Prudence threw back her head and laughed. Her hair of pale gold shimmered in the bright sunshine. She stretched out her arms to the blacksmith, beckoning, welcoming. After only a moment’s hesitation, he took both her hands. She swung backward, lifting her face to the sky.

Anne had never seen anyone so radiant. The young woman glowed. Her cheeks had blossomed into pink roses, and her eyes sparkled in her bright, lively face.

Anne leaned forward on the windowsill, entranced. The blacksmith said something to Prudence. She laughed and whirled away from him, lifting her skirts in her hands and spinning in giddy circles. His own face transfixed, Mr. Walker set his hands on his hips and watched the young woman, a smile softening his dark, craggy features.

“Prudence!” Anne whispered. “Oh, Prudence, what have you done?”

Golden hair flying, the young woman skipped across the grass toward the blacksmith again and flung her arms around him. With a look that somehow mingled both sadness and joy, he caught her up, swung her around, and kissed her gently.

“Prudence, you are truly in love,” Anne murmured. “And Mr. Walker is in love with you.”

As Anne let the curtains fall together, she discovered she was crying. She drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and buried her face in it, understanding at last why her friend had wept.

What could be more hopeless than the certainty that a love so rich and true must never be? What could be more numbing than to exist, as Ruel had said of his parents, in a marriage with no common purpose other than getting through life in the most comfortable fashion possible?

Anne pressed her handkerchief into the corner of her eye and stared down at her lap. Existence as the wife of the Marquess of Blackthorne offered at its best nothing better than routine and getting through life. At its worst, it might bring her a prison sentence.

There was only one thing to be done. She must put all romantic nonsense of her husband into the rubbish heap where it belonged, do her best to maneuver through the coming few weeks without becoming trapped like a spider in the marquess’s web of intrigue, and then hope . . . wish . . . pray that somewhere, somehow she might find a true love who would lift her up, swing her around in his arms, and kiss her gently on the lips.

Though fear nearly paralyzed her breath at dockside on the Thames, Anne watched her baggage loaded into the ship’s cargo hold without incident. Of course, it hardly mattered if she arrived in Flanders with a lace machine in her trunks. It was not there but in France that both the lace and the looms had been prohibited.

Barely in time to board the same ship transporting his party to the Continent, the marquess arrived from the purported inspection of his properties. By that time, everyone in the group had settled into their rooms. Too angry to confront him about her trunks, Anne avoided her husband at every turn.

The group sailed the short distance across the North Sea from England to Flanders. They then traveled by carriage to Brussels, where they put up in the Gothic fifteenth-century Hotel de Ville near the center of the city. Anne took a large suite next to her husband’s rooms, but she could not bring herself even to dine with the man. Though she would have no choice but to accompany him to balls and parties each evening, she refused to consider spending time with him alone. Instead, she ordered all her meals sent up to her, and she watched the city through her long, open windows.

Brussels. Anne could not have been more filled with wonder had she been escorted into heaven itself. Flanders was the birthplace of lace. Each city’s artisans had developed their own special techniques and decorative styles. Antwerp lace, known for its vase-and-lilies motif, was called pot lace. It symbolized the Annunciation, for lilies in a pot were shown often in early illustrations of the visit of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. At Bruges, the very best lace cravats were made, and no English gentleman of an aristocratic bent would be without one. The marquess himself owned five, though Anne felt humbly certain that her own length of Honiton far surpassed them. Beautiful lace also was made at Ghent, Mechlin, and Ypres. Anne had heard of a parasol cover once made in Ypres using eight thousand bobbins.