To Wed a Wicked Prince (8 page)

She became aware of Aurelia’s intent gaze and felt herself flush a little. “I’ll take a hackney to Richmond. Even if anyone sees me get in it, they won’t know where it’s going, and once we’re on the road it’ll be totally anonymous,” she said finally. “I’ll meet up with Alex and the horses in the park. Then I’ll come back in another hackney after our ride and no one will be the wiser.”

“Particularly if you take only the most secluded rides,” Aurelia remarked dryly. “The roads least traveled, as it were. I take it that’s the point,” she added, her eyes narrowed.

“It does seem to be,” Livia agreed, her flush deepening a little. “And there’s no harm in it, Ellie.”

Aurelia shrugged. “If you say so. I’m not your keeper, Liv, and you know what you’re doing.”

Livia laughed slightly. “Do I? I wonder.”

“I’m not about to preach morality, Liv,” her friend said with a smile. “Neither of us turned a hair when Harry played Casanova at Nell’s window, and if you want to have a liaison with a Russian prince under the trees of Richmond, then I’ll merely warn you to be careful of damp grass.”

Livia smiled with unconcealed relief. “I don’t think it’s going to come to that, but a little dalliance is very appealing.”

T
HE CZAR’S SEAL EMBLAZONED THE
message awaiting Alex as he returned to his lodgings. He took up his paper knife and slit the seal, opening the sheet that was covered in the emperor’s elegant script.

My dear friend.
Alex winced a little at the salutation. The czar had always embraced him as an elder brother…except on those occasions when his dignity demanded a degree of reserve…those occasions when he considered Alex had overstepped the boundaries of friendship with advice or faintly concealed criticism. Then he was icily imperial and not at all afraid of reminding his
friends
of the precariousness of their position, which depended solely on the degree to which they pleased their emperor. Unlike his grandmother, Alexander I was not a listener and did not choose to heed advice that went counter to his own convictions…convictions that once held were fixed in stone.

Alex sighed a little and returned to the missive. The czar’s enthusiasm for his new alliance with Napoleon filled the page, overflowed in superlatives. The promise of this alliance had no limits, it was to lift Russia into the position of world supremacy, side by side with her dearest friend, France. Together they would subjugate Europe and bring England to her knees. They would divide the known world between them. And Prince Prokov, the czar’s most trusted and loyal friend, was to help in this worthy aim and he would reap rewards beyond his dreams.

Send us information soon, my dear Alex, about the mood in the English court. Are they disheartened at our new alliance? How will they react when Russia joins Napoleon’s continental blockade? What will they do when they can no longer trade with Russia?

And just what will Russia do when England no longer receives her exports? Alex thought, his lip curling. England was Russia’s biggest export market for its raw materials. The merchants of St. Petersburg and Moscow would be in a frenzy of rebellion when English ships no longer anchored in their harbors and the warehouses bulged with the goods they could no longer sell. And all because of the orders of that
Corsican parvenu,
as the Dowager Empress described the Emperor Napoleon.

He turned his eyes back to the czar’s fluent script.
What plans do the English intend making with Austria? You will discover this in your clever way, my friend. And as to your fears that there may be disaffection among the émi
grés in London, have no fear, I have it well under control. I have my spies. Be careful yourself, my friend. No one can be trusted.

Alex read the last sentences carefully, a deep frown corrugating his brow. It sounded like a warning, but why should the czar warn
him
? Was he afraid Alex would run afoul of the disaffected? Or was he afraid of something quite different?

He remembered his visit from Prince Michael Michaelovitch. The old man was certainly devoted to his emperor, but he was not the brightest candle in the chandelier. If the secret police had indeed sent Michael to watch Alex, they had sent a rabbit to watch a fox.

“Will you be dining in tonight, Your Highness?” Boris, his arrival soundless, spoke softly from the door.

Alex shook his head. “No, I’m engaged with a party to the opera.” He glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantel. “In fact I’m going to be late as it is. Bring sherry to my chamber while I change, if you please, Boris.” He hurried through the door into his inner sanctum and from there into his bedchamber, shrugging out of his riding coat as he went.

Boris appeared within minutes with the sherry decanter and a plate of sweet biscuits. He set the tray on the dresser, and while Alex poured himself a glass, he opened the armoire and took out the black coat, white waistcoat, and knee britches that would be suitable wear for the opera.

The front door knocker sounded as he was helping his master into the coat. “Who can that be?” Alex muttered. “I’m not in to visitors, Boris.”

“No, sir.” The manservant glided towards the door to the hall. He opened it and then nodded. “Ah, it is only a messenger, Your Highness. Leo has answered the knock.” He stepped into the hall and summoned the bootboy who was just closing the front door. “Bring it here, boy.”

“Right away, Mr. Boris, sir.” The boy, who was no more than thirteen, scurried across the waxed floor, his boots skidding slightly in his haste. He touched his fore-lock as he handed Boris a wafer-sealed parchment. “’Tis for His Highness, Mr. Boris, sir.”

“One would assume so,” the manservant observed without expression as he took the sheet. He glanced over his shoulder. “Shall I send Leo to summon a chair, sir?”

“Yes, I’ll be ready in five minutes.” Alex frowned slightly as he made a minute adjustment to his starched cravat. “Bring me the message.” He held out a hand even as he continued to lean forward towards the mirror, twitching at a fold in the snowy linen.

Satisfied at last, he straightened and took the parchment from Boris. He glanced at the writing. Definitely a feminine hand, although the paper was white and unscented and the pen strokes lacked the flourishes and curlicues so common in female penmanship.

He took up a nail file from a silver dish on the dresser and slit the wafer. He opened up the sheet and took in the contents in one swift appraisal. A smile touched the corners of his mouth. So Lady Livia had a care for her reputation, did she? But not sufficient of a care to propose bringing a chaperone on their ride. Instead, she was proposing what could only be called an assignation. A secret rendezvous no less. It would seem she might have something more in mind than the need to try the mare’s paces.

He laughed softly. Livia had made the decision for him. Now was not the moment to change his tactics. If he kept up the pressure, increased the pace even, the citadel would surely fall. Livia Lacey, as he’d hoped, was able and willing to entertain her impulses. Her ready laugh and mischievous sense of humor had entranced him from the first moment and matched something deep in his own personality, a devil-may-care desire to shrug off convention, to pursue one’s own course. An unusual quality in a young woman of Livia’s position, but a most appealing one. She would be a worthy partner in his enterprise.

“Tell the chairmen to wait,” he instructed Boris as he got up from the dresser. “And tell Leo I will have a message for him to deliver to Cavendish Square in a few minutes.” He strode into his inner sanctum and sat down to write a reply to Livia.

“So, does the name Prince Prokov ring any bells, Harry?” Cornelia asked her husband somewhat impatiently. He seemed to be taking an inordinate length of time reading Aurelia’s missive.

Harry glanced up at her and gave her a wicked smile. “Maybe…maybe not,” he teased.

They were in the library of Cornelia’s country house, Dagenham Manor. In truth the house belonged to her young son, Stevie, who had inherited the title of Viscount Dagenham and the Dagenham estates on his father’s death. But until he came of age and found himself a wife, his mother would continue to consider it her own.

Cornelia leaned over the back of Harry’s chair and playfully snatched the vellum from his hand. “I don’t know how you could possibly know anything about him, or find out anything. You’ve been out of touch with your
friends
in the underworld for so long, I’m sure they’ve forgotten all about you.” She moved away from him, her eyes on the letter.

“Oh, unkind,” Harry protested with a chuckle. He reached out an arm and caught his wife around the waist, pulling her down onto his knee. “Such a sharp tongue, Nell. I’ve a mind to tame it.” He tipped her backwards, so that her head was against his shoulder, and kissed her smiling mouth.

When at last he raised his head, she was still smiling, but her breath came fast and her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright with the ready desire that Harry unfailingly aroused. “Well, there’s some truth in what I said,” she murmured, reaching up a hand to touch his face. “Don’t you think it’s time we returned to the real world, love?”

“Have you had enough of marital seclusion, then?” He caught her hand and turned it up, pressing his lips into the palm.

“It’s not that,” she said. “But I think you’re beginning to get restless…not bored exactly, but you need your work.” She sat up straight and looked at him closely. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

He was silent for a moment, then he shook his head. “No, you’re right. I do feel an itch now and again.”

“Then I think we had better scratch it before it consumes you,” she said, jumping up from his knee. “I’ll tell Linton that we’re leaving for London in the morning. She has plenty of time to get the children ready, although, of course, she’ll protest mightily.” She moved energetically towards the door.

“Just a minute.” Harry stopped her as she put her hand to the latch. “I get the impression you’re as anxious to get back into the swim of things as I am, Nell.”

She gave him a rueful smile. “In truth, perhaps I am. And I’m very curious to form my own impressions of this prince who’s pursuing Liv so ardently. Ellie seems to have reservations, didn’t you get that impression?”

“A little, perhaps. But I think she’s more concerned about Livia’s response to the pursuit.”

Cornelia turned her eyes back to the letter. “Perhaps so,” she murmured. “Reading between the lines, it sounds as if Livia finds the Russian more than ordinarily attractive and that’s what’s concerning Ellie. Anyway, do you think you’ll be able to find out anything about him from your colleagues at the ministry?”

“I’m sure I can,” Harry said confidently. “No Russian émigré in London is going to escape the surveillance of the ministry at the moment, not after Tilsit…in fact not before either,” he added. “I’ll send Eric up to London with a note to Hector warning him that we’ll be back in Mount Street by the day after tomorrow.”

He stood up and stretched. “With the children, we’ll need to make frequent stops on the way tomorrow and break the journey overnight.”

Cornelia grimaced. Harry had learned the hard way about the drawbacks of coach journeys with a travel-sick child. “Susannah should be all right if we stop every two hours,” she said somewhat tentatively.

He nodded. “Rather what I thought. But I intend to ride and I can take her up with me for a while when the motion of the carriage gets too much for her.”

“That’s a good notion. I’ll do the same, and maybe we can accomplish this journey without too much drama.”

“Don’t forget to write a note of farewell to the earl,” Harry reminded her as she opened the parlor door.

“That will be a pleasure,” Cornelia stated. “I’ll send it around to Markby Hall this evening.” Markby Hall, the seat of the earl of Markby, her first husband’s father, was a mere two miles from Dagenham Manor. Cornelia had no love for her ex-father-in-law, who before her marriage to Viscount Bonham had done everything in his power to control her life and that of her son, Stevie, his grandson and heir. Her marriage to Harry had at first enraged him, but somewhere along the line Harry had managed to reconcile him to the changed circumstances.

Cornelia suspected that her husband had promised the old earl that no decisions about his grandson’s future would be taken without his knowledge, maybe even his approval. It was a generous offer, and one that Cornelia herself would probably not have made, but in the circumstances she was willing to let sleeping dogs lie and ask no questions as to how Harry had brought about the miracle of reconciliation. Time enough for that if it ever became an issue.

She went up to the nursery, bracing herself for the inevitable storm to come when Linton, the children’s nurse, was informed that the nursery was moving to London the next day.

Livia woke at dawn, restless with a sense of excitement. She pushed aside the covers and got to her feet, stretching her limbs with a feeling of intense well-being. She went to the window and pulled back the curtains, then opened the casement, kneeling on the window seat to gaze out over the dew-glistening square garden. The sky was streaked with orange and red and the dawn chorus filled the air, which had a crisp tang to it, a foreshadow of autumn.

The city at this hour seemed fresh and clean and new. In an hour or two it would be noisy and dirty, filled with clanging iron wheels, shouting voices, and the reek of manure and human waste, sweat and rotting vegetables, mingling with the fragrance of meat pies and new baked bread.

But for the moment, it seemed to Livia to belong only to her, and the promise it contained was only hers.

Ludicrous fancy, of course, but still one that brought a frisson of excitement tingling along her spine.

She jumped off the window seat and went to the armoire, for the first time in her life wishing she had more than one riding habit. While the one she had was certainly elegant enough, the prince had already seen her wearing it twice. Then she pulled herself up sharply. She and her friends despised such petty considerations and her father, the austere Reverend Lacey, an aristocrat who refused to use his ancestral title and gave the revenues from his family estates in tithe to the church, chose to live as modestly as any country vicar. He had brought up his only child to accept, if not particularly to enjoy, a life of simple comforts, rigorous intellectual pursuits, and relative self-denial.

What he’d say to a Russian prince didn’t bear contemplating, Livia thought with a chuckle. Fortunately there was no reason for him ever to juxtapose such an exotic being with his carefully reared vicarage daughter.

She pulled out her riding habit and was wondering what she could do to effect some subtle change to the overall appearance, when a light tap at the door heralded Aurelia’s arrival.

“Oh, you’re up and about already,” Aurelia said cheerfully. “Franny had me up half an hour ago so I thought I’d come and see if you were awake. I was thinking that if you wore my black jacket with your green riding skirt, it would look like a different outfit.” She held up the close-fitting black jacket adorned with gold braid. “It would go well, I think.”

“A little daring,” Livia said. “Green and black and gold…but somehow fitting, I believe.” A devilish smile danced at the back of her gray eyes. “Will it fit, though? You’re rather smaller here”—she passed her hands vaguely over her bosom—“than I am.”