Tiger's Eye (42 page)

“If I thought so, I’d kill the bloody bastard by inches—but the man’s too much a coward, and too thoroughly frightened, to ’ave done such a thing.”

“Then who?”

“God, I’ve racked my brain and I can’t come up with any answer to that!”

“There’s no need to be in such a taking, Alec. I’m sure the countess ’as come to no ’arm.” Pearl rose from the bed, sublimely unconcerned with her nakedness until she caught Paddy’s darkening eye upon her. Then, with a conciliatory little moue in his direction, she picked up her white silk wrapper from the chair by the bed and shrugged into it, tying the ribbons and shaking her hair loose from the collar as she came toward Alec.

“Darlin’, what makes you think anything’s ’appened to ’er? ’Ow do you know the little—Isabella—’asn’t just decided that she’s ’ad enough of an adventure and gone back ’ome? Or maybe she’s found another lover. Some of us do that, you know.”

There was the barest undertone of malice to that, telling Alec that Pearl had not forgotten their recent quarrel.

“Isabella would no more do such a thing than she would fly,” he said positively, dismissing the suggestions as not even worth considering until something—
something—
in Pearl’s expression struck him as odd. He’d known her long, and he’d known her well, and he’d seen that cat-with-the-canary-in-its-mouth smile before.

“Damn you to bloody ’ell and back, Pearl,” he swore savagely, reaching for her and dragging her forward to stand in front of him, both hands closed tightly around her soft upper arms. “What ’ave you done?”

“ ’Ave you lost your mind, Alec? Take your ’ands off ’er!” Paddy was beside him, towering over him, glowering threateningly, but Alec paid him no mind. Pearl was looking frightened now, the malicious amusement that had shone from her eyes moments earlier replaced by an apprehension that was obvious to those who knew her as well as Alec—and Paddy—did.

“Good God, woman!” Paddy muttered, one look at her face convicting her for him as well as Alec.

“What ’ave you done?” Alec growled again, and when Pearl still didn’t answer, he shook her furiously. “What ’ave you done? You’ll tell me, or I’ll …”

“Ow, Alec, you’re ’urting me, you are! Paddy, are you goin’ to let ’im treat me this way? You said you loved me! Ow!”

Alec was beside himself, ready to wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze the answer out of her if need be. Paddy, seeing the fury in his friend’s face, placed a restraining hand on his arm.

“Leave off now, Alec. Leave ’er to me.”

“And welcome,” Alec said bitterly, thrusting Pearl toward him. Like Alec, Paddy held Pearl’s upper arms in his huge hands, but his grip was gentler. She looked up at him, her white-blonde hair spilling down her back, her midnight blue eyes wide and frightened. She looked very young suddenly—and very guilty.

“Pearl?” Paddy questioned softly, his eyes fastening on and holding hers.

Pearl looked up at him for a long moment without speaking. Then her face crumpled and she burst into noisy tears.

LVII

I
n a week Isabella found herself in Paris. The city was in an uproar, as Royalist troops searched out the last of the Bonapartists who, unable to escape with their master, had gone into hiding. Soldiers in their tall shakos and fine pelisses marched the streets at all hours. Homes were summarily searched, and scores of people were arrested for no greater charge than having been loyal to Napoleon. The Tuileries, returned to the Bourbon King, glittered every night with festivities as all those in Paris—the French citizenry and the English who flocked into the city to be present at this triumphal moment—celebrated the Bourbon restoration. If some of those present would have just as joyously welcomed the return of Napoleon, no one could have told it from the dedication with which they celebrated the new regime.

The Duke of Wellington had been named Ambassador of Paris, and all the talk was of the assassination attempt against him that had gone awry. Isabella, receiving afternoon callers with her stepmother in the sitting room of the house Bernard had leased in the fashionable rue de la Printemps, listened as Colonel Tynling told the tale yet again:

“The assassin placed himself in the Rue Royale, just outside the gateway of the courtyard of Nosey’s hotel. Just as Nosey’s carriage turned into the gateway, the fellow commenced firing his pistol at the duke; then when the weapon emptied he ran up the street and made his escape before he could be seized by the sentries who were on duty at the hotel’s entrance. The Minister of Police—a Frenchy, of course—made a great noise about discovering the criminal, but the man got clean away, to Belgium it is said. Of course, he had help from those who employed him.”

“Do you think he was hired? Who would do such a thing?” One of the other guests, a petite little redhead named Miss Brantley, breathed in wide-eyed fascination. That her fascination was more for Colonel Tynling than his tale was well-known, and obvious even to one as new to their company as Isabella. But the Colonel, feeling himself properly appreciated, visibly swelled.

“There are those who would have Bonaparte back, who would stop at nothing to send fat Louis packing.”

“Oh, my!” Miss Brantley gasped, apparently awe-stricken. It was all Isabella could do not to roll her eyes in disgust. This, her first taste of Society, was likely to give her a disgust for it that no amount of time could eradicate.

The six days since their arrival in the newly liberated city—the party consisted of Bernard, herself, the duke and his wife—had been spent largely in an orgy of shopping. Isabella, escorted by Sarah and a “footman” named Lambert whom Isabella suspected had really been employed to keep an eye on her, had visited mantua-makers by the dozen. Without Alec to dazzle, she contented herself with restoring her accustomed appearance. Thus it was that, for all her wardrobe’s expense, it consisted of quiet blues and grays and mauves. Once again she faded into the background, attracting no notice. Her hair she styled as she had for years, scraped back into a tidy knot at her nape. The fringe that Mr. Alderson had so cunningly fashioned still framed her face, hinting at the quiet beauty that she didn’t care enough to let shine, but in the general drabness of her appearance no one noticed. She was sensible Isabella again, and determined to remain so.

“She’s such a … a nothing,” Sarah complained to the duke that evening, after Isabella had spent the entire afternoon seated on the small settee with hardly a word to say for herself. “She’s an embarrassment, Charles, really. Why must I do this?”

Isabella, who had come into the hall behind Sarah, was neither hurt nor surprised by this overhead outburst. Indeed, she felt nothing at all as she listened to her hitherto despised stepmother’s words. If Sarah was ashamed of her, then good. She herself had no love for Sarah. But to her surprise, Isabella found that she no longer either hated or feared her, as she had as a girl. She felt only indifference. Sarah had lost her power to wound at last.

“To protect our name, of course. Do you want it bruited about that our daughter spent months in the company of a man not her husband? Think of that, my dear, and be thankful that Isabella is not one to attract much attention. No one will remember just when she was and was not in Paris, as they would if she were a raving beauty.”

“I had not thought of that,” Sarah said, frowning. Then their carriage arrived and they left.

Isabella and Bernard were to join them at the Elysée that evening, to pay their respects as new arrivals to the King, but they would not leave until half past ten, and at the moment it was only five. Bernard was not in the house—indeed, she had seen him only in company since that first shattering confrontation in the Pelican—and would likely arrive at the house just in time to change into evening clothes before going out. He treated her with courtesy in public, and ignored her in private, which put their relationship back on a footing similar to that which had always existed between them. Appeased by the healthy bribe her father had bestowed on him, and made a little wary by her open accusation of attempted murder, Bernard seemed to have abandoned any notion of ridding himself of his wife.

For the time being at least.

Glancing out through the glass sidelight by the imposing front door, Isabella saw that Lambert was stationed by the front steps. She wondered what he would do if she simply walked out the door, down the steps and away … away to England, Amberwood and Alec.

Stop her, of course. Without ever putting it to the test, she knew.

Suddenly Isabella was afflicted with the most dreadful headache. Or was it heartache that sent her to her room to rest?

LVIII

I
t was late afternoon two days later. At Sarah’s insistence, Isabella had joined a party of her friends watching a balloon ascension from a carriage in the Place de I’Etoile. Nearby stood the half-completed Arc de Triomphe, which Napoleon had intended to stand as a symbol of his victories and which had been hastily abandoned. As the balloonists were having some trouble getting their craft in the air, Isabella stepped down from the carriage to join Miss Brantley and Sarah in viewing the symbol of the deposed Emperor’s waning fortunes. Colonel Tynling and Viscount de Lile, who formed the rest of the party, stayed behind to watch the adventurers’ efforts, so the ladies ventured forth alone.

The carriage was only a few yards from the monument, but many people had crowded into the square to watch the promised spectacle, and it took some time to pick their way through the crowd. Isabella found herself jostled mercilessly, and when a hand caught her arm, she was hardly surprised.

“Please release my …” she began, turning to treat her assailant to a frosty stare. But then the words died in her throat. The square with its noisy crowd faded into nothingness.

“Alec,” she said. Then again, helplessly, “Alec.”

He looked down at her, those golden eyes intent, then without a word, turned and pulled her by the hand through the crowd.

Isabella followed him, blindly obedient, her heart pounding so fiercely that she could scarcely breathe, let alone think. She fastened her eyes on the back of that tawny head, and drank in the sight of him.

Alec had come at last.

He pulled her into a little walled garden in the nearby Champs Elysées. Then at last, when they were totally secure in their privacy, he stopped walking and turned to look at her. Those golden eyes moved over her face as if he were starved for the sight of her. His hands caught hers and he pulled her close, their bodies almost touching.

“My God, Isabella, I’ve been going out of my mind,” he said quietly. And then she was locked in his embrace, her arms sliding around his neck to clutch him as if she would never let him go. They kissed tenderly, fiercely, as if they would die if they didn’t.

When at last he lifted his head, he still held her pressed against him, his arms around her, his mouth in her hair.

“ ’Twas Pearl,” he said. “She confessed when Paddy taxed her. She was jealous, crazy jealous, and when she knew that I’d be coming up to London and you’d be at Amberwood alone, she sent messages to that whoreson husband of yours and, to her credit, to your father, thinking that way to at least save you from being murdered on the spot. I near strangled her when she admitted what she’d done. Only Paddy stopped me, but he was wroth with her too. She said when I found you I should tell you she was sorry for what she did.”

“Oh, Alec,” she murmured foolishly against the solid warmth of his chest. She didn’t seem capable of saying anything else. Just his name, again and again. Like a litany. His words went completely over her head. She barely heard them. All she cared about was being back in his arms. She felt suddenly whole once more, as if half of her that had been missing had been found.

“Has the bloody bastard harmed you?”

“No. He had no more reason to, you see. My father has given him a fortune not to divorce me. For adultery. With you.” The absurdity of it struck her then, and she gave a hysterical little giggle.

As inured as she was to his language, the word he said then made the tips of her ears burn. Pushing a little away, she looked up at him. Her eyes touched every chiselled feature, caressed every well-loved plane and angle of that handsome face. His broad shoulders blocked her view of the rest of the garden, but she wouldn’t have cared if there had been a hundred spectators. She rose up on tiptoe and kissed him full on the mouth, softly and tenderly, with exquisite feeling. Then, as his arms tightened around her and his mouth took control of the kiss, the tenderness blazed into throbbing passion.

“Oh, Alec,” she said again when she could talk, her forehead bowed against him, resting just below the hollow in his neck. “I feared never to see you again.”

“No chance of that, my girl.” He was still holding her, but more loosely now, and his voice had recovered some of its normal aplomb. “ ’Twas France that threw me off, or I’d have come for you sooner. As it was, I had men scouring every nook and cranny of England. Finally a chap in Portsmouth remembered seeing a lady of your description boarding a ship. After that it was easy.”

“I’ve missed you so.”

“And I’ve missed you. It embarrasses me when I think how much. But enough of this. We’ll have time and more for this kind of foolishness once I have you safe away.”

He dropped a kiss on her hair, then another on her nose, then a third on her mouth. His arms dropped from around her waist. He caught her hand, and would have herded her from the garden. Beyond him, just outside the shoulder-high stone walls, Isabella caught a glimpse of a hulking giant and perhaps half a dozen others. Alec had brought a small army of his own, it seemed. With Paddy and the rest guarding the entrance to the garden, no wonder she and Alec found themselves completely alone.

“No, Alec,” she said gently. She knew that what she was doing was the only possible thing, but still she felt as though she were being stabbed clear through to the heart. For just a moment she allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to go with him, back to Amberwood or wherever he wished, to live with him and be his love as he had once asked her to. But then, in a blinding flash of reality, she knew that such an existence, while beautiful to imagine, would be impossible in real life. If she were to disappear again, after this time being so visible in Paris, there would be a scandal. Bernard and her father would inevitably turn up at Amberwood in a matter of days. Even if she and Alec were to go elsewhere, they would be found.