“Where we would have gone had we caught up with you and your companion sooner.”
“Conan was with you, but you took me away instead of him doing so? Why?”
“He said he couldn’t risk getting caught with you. Your grandparents are too interested in the two of you marrying.”
That her grandparents were interested in her marrying Conan was news to Elizabeth.
“And if I’m caught with you by someone who has interest in marrying me himself?”
The stranger said nothing. The horses began to slow, their sides heaving with exertion. Hoofbeats behind them sounded closer, and the stranger released Elizabeth’s reins. “Ride ahead of me. If they catch up with us, I’ll do my best to slow them.”
“But where am I going?” A note of panic tinged her voice.
“Straight into town, then right at the first turn.”
“Then where am I going?” She would have reined in if the thunder of hooves and rumble of wheels didn’t vibrate the air like an explosion.
“There’s a house that belongs to a friend of Conan’s. We can hide there until the coast has cleared to leave.”
She wanted to stop. She wanted to slide to the ground and run. But she kept going, marking the beginning of houses that indicated the town lying quiet and dark in the night. She made herself speak with calm. “I can’t do that. It’s wrong. It’s indecent. I don’t even know you.”
“I know you, Miss Elys Trelawny.”
“Nonsense. I don’t even know your name.”
“Rowan Curnow.”
A good Cornish name, even if his speech said someplace most likely not even British.
“I am certain I’ve never met you.”
“Not . . . formally, but—” He hesitated. “It’s no doubt rude of me to remind you of this, Miss Trelawny, but you danced with me at the Drummonds’ masquerade ball last month. I was the one dressed as the Marquis de Lafayette.”
The masquerade ball in London three weeks earlier, two weeks before she began her mad dash for Cornwall. The man who had drawn her attention, a rare man taller than she was and dressed like a French soldier of the Ancient Regime. The only gentleman dressed like the Marquis de Lafayette.
Like the gentleman she’d been so unwise as to kiss in the ballroom bower.
CHAPTER 3
WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE.
Elizabeth wanted to set her mount from their present canter to a gallop and vanish somewhere in the warren of streets opening around them. Better yet, she should disappear into a larger city like Plymouth. She could reappear in about a decade when too many other scandals large and small would have blotted out memories of her folly.
Unfortunately, she needed to ride around the first right-hand turn in the lane, a narrow alleyway. The sounds of pursuit faded beyond high garden walls, but not enough that she dared to venture forth on her own. She was stranded with the stranger and her shame.
“I was feeling desperate,” she began. “That is to say, I’ve never before . . . I take being a Trelawny and a lady quite seriously . . .” She stumbled over her confused and mumbled excuses for what had simply been an act of rebellion, a kick against restraints too long in place.
She’d never been kissed before that night. Although the humiliating fact was she hadn’t been kissed by him so much as done the kissing herself—clumsily, inexpertly, mashing her nose on his before she managed to touch her lips to his. And he’d been such a gentleman about it. He hadn’t laughed at her, at least not aloud. He’d held her waist, but whether to set her from him or draw her closer she wasn’t given the opportunity to find out before Mama shoved aside the trailing vines forming a curtain to the bower.
No one took that kiss too seriously. Not even Mama. She had been so eager to drag Elizabeth out of the ballroom she hadn’t given the man a thought until later when seeking his identity would have brought even more attention to her daughter’s outrageous behavior. Wanting Elizabeth married off, Mama ranted about how a gentleman would have owned up to his bad behavior, but the misstep wasn’t his; it was Elizabeth’s, and she hadn’t blamed him for vanishing. He hadn’t been eligible. He didn’t appear to be eligible now. He had likely sneaked into the ball uninvited and needed to depart before anyone caught him.
“He never should have let me kiss him,” had been Elizabeth’s only excuse.
“A man will take what you give him, Elizabeth,” had been only one line of a lecture that could have rivaled a seven-volume novel. “You go into an alcove with a man, especially when you both wear masks, and the rest is inevitable.”
Especially when the female in the duet rose on her toes and set her lips to the man’s.
She pressed the back of her gloved hand to her mouth and rubbed, as though she could scrub away the memory, the sensation of that contact. But it clung to her lips and thoughts like the odors of the inn and the mud from their dash through the fields was clinging to her cloak.
Disappearing into the night for a score of years might be long enough to blot out her mortification. She settled for bowing her head and allowing her hood to fall forward and hide her face.
He reached across the space between their mounts and touched her arm. “I wasn’t a complete stranger, Miss Trelawny.”
No more Elys or even Elizabeth. They had reverted to the formal and proper addresses. This was good. It created distance.
It left her hollow.
“We’d met at Hookham’s Library the day before,” he continued.
Her head snapped up. “We had? I’m afraid I don’t remember.”
The ball, the kiss, and the consequences had blotted out all memory of the rest of that first week of the season.
“We were reaching for the same volume of John Locke.”
“Nonsense. My mother would never allow me to read John Locke.”
“Which is why you were reading it between the stacks, I expect?”
Elizabeth laughed, some of her mortification easing. “So you found me out. I manage to elude her watchful eye upon occasion. Oh, I do remember. But I never saw your face. I mean, I never looked around at you.”
She would have remembered a face like his.
“I saw your face when you walked in. You had on a white straw hat with ribbons the color of your eyes. I thought you were the prettiest lady I’d seen in London.”
Elizabeth snorted. “You need spectacles, sir.”
Despite her derisive words, warmth spread through her at the compliment. It wasn’t true, of course. He was simply being a gentleman, trying to make her feel better about having kissed a stranger at a ball.
They lapsed into silence as they rode deeper into town, the broader thoroughfare streets quiet, with lanterns hanging outside inns and homes. The horses’ hooves rang like hammer blows upon the cobbles, and any speech between them might have been overheard by someone at an open window or tucked into a doorway.
At one of those doorways, one set into the front of a tall, narrow house in the middle of a row of tall, narrow houses, Rowan Curnow stopped, dismounted, and reached up his hands to lift her down. “I’ll take the horses to the mews, then be back.”
“We’re staying here?” Elizabeth twisted her hands together in the damp folds of her velvet cloak. “Alone?” With not a whisper of pursuit now, could she dare escape on her own?
“The lantern is hanging on the left side of the door, so I know Conan managed to get Miss Pross here and all is well.”
“Conan got her here? What of my coachman?”
She should have thought of him sooner, but he was hired merely for this journey, and she didn’t even know his name. Still, he needed to be paid and his transport back to London managed.
“He fell off the box when he tried to shoot us with a blunderbuss, so Conan intended to take him to an apothecary and pay for him to sail back to London.”
More difficult for Romsford to find and question if he was on the water. Clever Conan.
Rowan touched a fingertip to her chin. “All is well ri
ght now. Let’s see it stays that way.”
“Yes, of course.” Finding her in Falmouth would not be easy for the marquess, but no sense in taking risks.
“I’ll escort you and Miss Pross to Bastion Point day after tomorrow.”
“What about Conan? Didn’t he stay?”
“He said he wouldn’t. He wanted to get home and be sure . . . Drake is all right.”
She hugged her arms across her middle. “I don’t know how to thank you. My parents think I’m mad for so blatantly trying to avoid marriage to Romsford.” Mad enough to kiss a stranger at a masked ball. “But he was repulsive and . . . and— Well, I thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled.
Her insides turned to the consistency of a jellied eel. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “Shall I knock for Miss Pross?”
“I’ve a key.” He produced it from a coat pocket and opened the door.
Warmth and the scent of apples and spices flowed out like beckoning arms. Elizabeth stepped into that embrace, to the promise of dry clothes and a fire, to candlelight and, suddenly, Miss Pross flying out of nowhere to wrap her plump arms around Elizabeth.
“You’re safe. Thank the good Lord. I’ve been sitting here praying and praying, and is Mr. Drake coming in?”
“No, he—that is—” Elizabeth glanced back at the clop of hooves.
Rowan was already walking the horses away into the shadows of the street between house lanterns.
“He’s taking care of the horses.”
Her conscience pricked at not confessing the man was not her brother. If they were to hole up for another day, Drake might come to help instead of the stranger.
“Romsford gave us a merry chase,” she said instead. “But we managed to circle back here.”
“That man.” Miss Pross shut the door and threw the bolt with a decisive click. “He and his men were most rude to me and Lord Penvenan. Were I not so much shorter than you, I think he would have pulled off my garments to prove I wasn’t you in disguise. Something is wrong with a man who is so desperate for a bride.”
“He still doesn’t have an heir and has three dead wives.” Dead, rumors had it, by his hand when they produced only daughters, two of whom were older than Elizabeth.
She shivered.
“You’re wet and cold. Let’s get you up to your room. There’s a fire, and I can fetch up hot water.” Miss Pross tucked her arm through Elizabeth’s and bustled her toward the staircase.
She not only set Elizabeth down before a fire and produced cans of hot water for washing, she provided her with bread and cheese and an apple pie. Elizabeth ate every crumb and drank an entire pot of tea with it. She snuggled in the brocade dressing gown trimmed with swansdown Miss Pross produced from the luggage, a fur blanket from the back of a bedchamber chaise, and the drying and brushed cloak of her hair before she finally stopped shivering.
Returning from the kitchen with another steaming pot, this one smelling of hot chocolate, Miss Pross sat opposite Elizabeth, poured out two cups of the dark, spiced liquid, and fixed Elizabeth with her piercing dark eyes. “A handsome young man has taken up residence in the kitchen. Let himself in with a key. Quite unexceptionable behavior, but not truly a gentleman.”
“Indeed?” Elizabeth hid behind her chocolate cup.
“Indeed.” Miss Pross’s mouth set in a thin line for a moment. “He has a peculiar way of speaking, so I asked him where he’s from. He says South Carolina. That’s in the colonies, isn’t it? Or rather, states, I think they call them now.”
“Is that what his accent—” Elizabeth sank her teeth into her lower lip—too late.
Miss Pross set down her cup. “You weren’t with Drake tonight, were you?”
“No.” Elizabeth’s cheeks burned. “I thought he was Drake when he carried me off, but when we sheltered from the storm in an inn before Romsford caught up with us, I realized— You won’t . . . tell anyone, will you? I’d be quite, quite ruined if anyone found out.” Elizabeth’s hands shook.
“Which, of course, would make you unacceptable to the marquess.” Miss Pross’s eyes gleamed.
“Miss Pross, you would never betray me.” She paused, considering the ramifications of creating a greater scandal than kissing a masked man at a ball. She watched firelight shimmer in her cup and set it down before her shaking spilled the dark liquid on her dressing gown. “If necessary—only if necessary—let me tell the grandparents myself. They will decide what to tell my parents.”
“That seems well enough, though I would prefer not to keep things from Sir Petrok and Lady Trelawny. And he seems like a nice young man. Not good enough for a Trelawny of Bastion Point, of course, but a treat to the eyes.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Miss Pross, for shame.”
They finished their chocolate over a discussion of the best way to reach Bastion Point the following morning. By then morning had come. As Miss Pross gathered up the chocolate cups and set them on the tray for delivery to the kitchen, the first streaks of dawn began to light the bedchamber window.
Elizabeth rose and picked out clothes to wear for a day of hiding. It must be something nice after her disheveled appearance Mr. Curnow had seen the night before. She also chose garments to wear for seeing the grandparents for the first time in six years. The last time they had seen her, she’d been a gawky fifteen, too tall, too thin, too inclined to turn her gowns into rags by the end of a day riding, fishing, or exploring the caves beneath the cliffs on which the ancestral home had been built.
Now she was twenty-one, still too tall, taller than most men, and far from too thin. The high waist and narrow skirt of her blue cambric gown and pelisse emphasized her height and curves, not at all acceptable traits for fashion or beauty. Likewise, her hair was so straight it refused all attempts to curl it as other young ladies did, swept to one side of their faces or caught up in back. She was lucky if her heavy mahogany tresses remained in pins for an entire evening. She wanted to braid it and wrap it around her head, but that would have increased her height.
She braided it that day, though. Mr. Curnow wouldn’t care about how tall she was, especially since she saw nothing of him throughout the hours that dragged past with too much inactivity. After some much-needed sleep, she read. She plied her needle to a strip of embroidery for a gown, and she climbed up and down the steep staircase to work knots loose from her legs, cramping from riding as far and as fast as she had the night before. Mr. Curnow didn’t return until sometime that night when she startled awake to the click of a closing door below stairs and then heard only silence.
The silence assured her Romsford had not found her. He would have charged up the steps to carry her away. Likewise, Drake hadn’t come to fetch her. He, too, would have cared nothing for her being asleep.
Disappointment over her brother’s continuing absence warred with curiosity about the stranger and kept her awake through two rounds of a distant church bell ringing. Dawn was turning the square of window from black to gray before she finally slept again.
Miss Pross, not looking rested from the week’s mad dash across the country, woke Elizabeth and presented her with a neatly pressed rose jacquard gown. “We will be heading for Bastion Point today.”
“Wonderful.” Feeling as though she would fly out of the door screeching if she had to remain inside another day, Elizabeth barely managed to stand still as Miss Pross hooked up the back of Elizabeth’s gown and pinned up her hair.
“There’s tea and toast in the kitchen.” Miss Pross walked to the door. “Mr. Curnow says we will leave in half an hour from now.”
For the duration of their stay, he had made himself scarce. He wasn’t in the kitchen, where Elizabeth and Miss Pross seated themselves at the table to sip at cups of tea and nibble on slices of toast. Neither said much. Miss Pross kept glancing toward the window, and Elizabeth was thinking of what lay ahead. Now that she was about to see the grandparents and brother, her insides had begun a twisting, turning motion like cream
beneath the paddle of a butter churn. Excitement. Anxiety. The wish to tell Drake what she thought of him abandoning her.
Then Mr. Curnow walked through the kitchen door, and the churning in her middle turned to a lump of lead in the pit of her stomach. Her mouth went dry, and the toast in her hand crumbled to dust between her fingers.
He looked even finer by the light of day. Imposing and strong.
She offered him a tentative smile.
He didn’t smile back. As he shut the door behind him and closed the distance between entry and table, sunlight fell on his face, emphasizing pallor beneath his sun-bronzed skin, especially a whiteness around his lips.
She surged to her feet, knocking her chair over. “What’s wrong?”
“Conan . . . and your brother . . .” He took her hand, toast crumbs and all, in both of his. “I just learned in the mews stable—” A tremor ran through his hands to hers.
She swallowed a cry. “What about my brother and my friend?”
“Mr. Trelawny was nearly caught by the revenue officers and has gone into hiding, and Conan—” He took her other hand in his. “Conan is dead.”
“Dead?” Elizabeth and Miss Pross chorused.
Elizabeth’s grip tightened on Mr. Curnow’s. “There must be some kind of mistake.”
“He was well night before last.” Miss Pross clutched at the edge of the table. Her eyes widened, the pupils dilating.
“How?” Elizabeth kept hold of Mr. Curnow’s hands for balance in a world that had begun to spin out of control. “Di-did the revenue men shoot him? I’ve always feared either Conan or Drake would end up—”
“No, it wasn’t the excise officers who killed him.” Mr. Curnow released her fingers and closed his hands over her shoulders. “He was murdered.”
CHAPTER 4
ROWAN STEPPED CLOSER SO HE COULD SLIP HIS ARMS around Miss Trelawny if she fainted. Her face had drained of color, her already creamy skin becoming so pallid her ice-blue eyes shone as vividly as the sky.
A Lady's Honor Page 3
