There, standing in the doorway, was Alistair, soaking wet and wearing an expression of thunderous rage.
Chapter Fifteen
It had taken an hour to get these rustic loobies to tell him anything useful.
“You’ll be meaning the injured gentlefolk,” said the innkeeper, in answer to Alistair’s inquiry about the overturned carriage.
Alistair pushed a coin towards the man. It was a shilling, which was likely a good deal over the going rate for this sort of thing, but he didn’t care. “Where have they been taken?”
One of the other patrons chimed in with a cheerful description of the quantities of blood that had been involved. The consensus among the fine fellows at the Duck and Dragon was that the chief victim in today’s entertainments was a lady of uncommon beauty—that wasn’t precisely the language the peasants used, but Alistair was able to make the inference. The other victim was a gentleman the barmaid pronounced as handsome as a prince in a fairy story, which was a nauseating way to hear one’s brother described. But evidently Gilbert had walked away from the accident, which was promising. There was also a coachman and the lady’s companion, who Alistair assumed to be the ancient aunt, and who ought to be thrown into the sea for lending her countenance to an elopement.
He asked whether there had been another gentleman present, but nobody knew anything. Robin had left London ahead of Alistair, so she ought to have caught up with the pair of absconding fools already. The entire journey from London, he had been certain every clap of thunder would be the one that would cause Mab to startle and toss her rider. He had driven with an eye for loose horses and broken bodies.
The sight of Gilbert’s overturned carriage had nearly made his heart stop.
“But where have they been taken?” he asked again, pointedly holding out another shilling.
“It depends who’s asking, don’t it?”
Alistair didn’t really see that it did, but in this case his answer ought to be sufficient. “I’m the Marquess of Pembroke.”
Five minutes later he was on the innkeeper’s own horse—the roads in this corner of hell evidently not being suitable for anything with wheels—and headed in the direction of a place with the inauspicious name of Trout Farm. But when he arrived, it was only to discover that Gilbert was no longer there.
“He went home with the doctor,” said the woman who answered the door. “But the young lady is still upstairs.”
“She’ll do.” Alistair didn’t wait for an invitation; he climbed the stairs two at a time and entered the room without knocking. Tonight was not a night for civilities. For all he knew, Robin was lying in a ditch someplace. Alistair wasn’t going to leave until he discovered whatever that hen-witted Selby girl knew about Robin’s whereabouts.
Miss Selby lay on a narrow bed, her eyes shut and her head bandaged. At the bedside sat a woman wearing an ill-fitting dress and a monstrous cap, likely a village woman who had been pressed into service as a nurse.
“I need a few words with Miss Selby.” He used his iciest, most commanding tones. “You may wake her and then take yourself off.” Rummaging through his pockets, he found another coin and held it out to her.
“Really?” the woman said. “Seriously?”
It took his mind a few moments to catch up with his eyes. “Robin?” He retrieved his spectacles from his pocket and put them on. “Why are you wearing that cap?” That seemed a safer topic than falling to his knees and thanking God she was alive.
“You.” She rose to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at him. “You are nothing but an arrogant, overbearing bastard.”
All true. All irrelevant. He opened his mouth to say as much, but she cut him off.
“If you had any kind of relationship with your brother, he might have known you didn’t have designs on Louisa. And if you weren’t such a bloody ogre, the pair of them wouldn’t have thought you capable of forcing girls into marriage in the first place.”
She sounded to be in fighting form, so that was something to be thankful for. “I gather I’m the villain in this piece.”
“As far as I can tell, the pair of idiots thought you meant to persuade me or blackmail me into forcing her hand. Aunt Agatha drugged me with laudanum—”
“What!” he roared. The idea of Robin being poisoned like a character in one of those dratted novels made his blood positively boil.
“Shh. You’ll wake Louisa.” She paused and stared at him. “You’re wet. Did it start raining again?”
“Only the pleasantest drizzle, just the thing to add some excitement to the business of chasing my loved ones over hill and dale. Robin, my dear, I could point out that in the melodrama you’ve regaled me with, you play a role as well. But you’ve had a trying day and I don’t want to be tedious.”
She had been fiddling with the edge of her cap, and now gave up and tore it off entirely. Alistair nearly sighed with relief to see her looking recognizable, albeit furious.
“If you think I engineered this elopement, you’re an even greater fool than I had thought.” Her hands were on her hips and her face was flushed with anger.
“That notion hadn’t even occurred to me.” He saw that she was pulling at her skirt, as if trying to make it behave. “Why are you wearing those clothes, though?”
She narrowed her eyes. “So I can nurse Louisa, obviously.”
He hadn’t thought of that. “How is she?” He should have asked that immediately, but in the scope of today’s events, Louisa’s welfare ranked low. It mattered to Robin, though, and presumably to Gilbert as well, so it meant something to him in a roundabout, secondhand sort of way.
“She has a head wound, but she was awake and sensible when the doctor was here. Frankly, I think she only swooned when she saw your brother’s arm, not due to her own injury. Gilbert is fine. After his arm was set, he insisted on spending the night at the doctor’s house so Louisa wouldn’t be compromised.”
“Good God, he might have thought of that before actually eloping with her.”
She cracked a tired smile at that. “Are you spending the night at the inn and then returning to London with Gilbert in the morning?”
“Are you certain you didn’t suffer a blow to the head as well, Robin? If you imagine that my brother would abandon his wounded lady love and return to London, you have a very unfair notion of Gilbert. He’ll haunt this house day and night, bringing posies and generally making a nuisance of himself. And I will stay here as long as he does. That way this adventure can pass as a family holiday, rather than an interrupted elopement.”
“You don’t need to—”
“You’re quite right that I don’t. But it’s the only way I can salvage this situation without coming out looking like a fool.” More importantly, he wasn’t leaving Robin here in this mud-soaked backwater to fend for herself.
She narrowed her eyes. “Very intriguing! I recall us having a conversation only yesterday in which you failed to understand that an imprudent marriage might be cause for embarrassment.”
“This is sophistry, Robin. Gilbert is not making an imprudent marriage.” This was a lie. Marrying the penniless daughter of a minor country squire was emphatically imprudent for a man in Gilbert’s position, even when the girl hadn’t aided and abetted a felony. But that was hardly a point Alistair could concede, given his recent matrimonial efforts. “It’s the elopement, not the match, that I take issue with. Elopements have a way of making objects of ridicule out of the people who are being eloped from, as it were.” He looked pointedly at her.
“True.” She sniffed.
“What name did you give these people?” He needed to know how to address her when they weren’t alone.
She shot him a withering glance. “Charity Church, of course.”
There was no of course about it. For all he knew, she had a stable filled with alternate names she trotted out as the spirit moved her, but he wasn’t going to needle her about that when she looked so exhausted. “Very well.” There was plenty of time
for him to sort this out, to sift through her secrets and her stories. He stepped forward and took her hands in his. “Try to rest. I know you won’t sleep, but at least rest.” She looked up at him, her anger gone, nothing but weariness left.
After giving her hands a parting squeeze, he put his wet, ruined hat back on his wet, cold head and began the muddy return trip to the inn.
Strange surroundings, fatigue, the lingering effects of Aunt Agatha’s evil-tasting sleeping draught, and the boneless lethargy that comes after fear all combined to give the day an air of unreality. If Charity had suddenly found herself in her bed in London—or even at Fenshawe, or in a workhouse for that matter—she would hardly have been surprised.
Louisa slept most of the day, waking only to tearfully apologize or ask after Gilbert. Charity felt her patience in great danger of slipping. Bollocks on Gilbert, she wanted to shout. Bugger the daft bastard. If he hadn’t broken his arm in the accident she would have broken it for him, for having convinced Louisa that she needed to elope.
She was likely being unfair to the gentleman, but wasn’t feeling very just-minded, under the circumstances.
If only she had a book to read aloud to soothe Louisa and amuse herself. The Trouts had a Bible and a cookery book, neither of which suited Charity’s current mood. While she was listing things she wanted and wouldn’t get, she wouldn’t have complained about a hot bath or comfortable clothing. Maybe also one of those sweet buns they sold on the street in London. A glass of wine, a cheroot, any way out of this mess . . .
She woke to the sensation of nearly toppling out of the straight-backed chair. Immediately, she darted a glance at Louisa, but her chest was rising and falling in the usual manner.
Around midday, Mrs. Trout brought a package. Charity tore it open. Well, well. Alistair had been busy. The only message was a note from Gilbert to Louisa, but the other contents were unmistakably Alistair’s doing. There was a selection of novels, a packet of lemon drops, and two gowns.
The farmer’s wife had been standing right there when Charity opened the parcel, so Charity had no choice but to change into one of the new gowns and give Mrs. Trout back her own frock. The woman likely didn’t have more than two dresses, so it would be unreasonable of Charity to keep wearing this one when she had an alternative, even if she didn’t like the idea of wearing a dress Alistair had chosen for her.
To be fair, she didn’t like the idea of wearing any dress at all, but Alistair having a hand in the matter sat ill with her.
Both dresses were printed cotton round gowns with high necks, the sort of thing Louisa wore to pick apples and oversee the cheese-making. Nothing fancy or fine, thank God. No trim, no lace. She shook one of the dresses out and inspected it at arm’s length, as if she thought a spider might crawl out from between its folds. There was a closure on the side, so she could dress herself without assistance. If she absolutely had to wear a dress, she could hardly do better than this one. The second gown was much the same as the first.
The chemises were a different story. There were five of them, each made of handkerchief-fine linen. What did the man think, she was, a Russian princess? Five chemises, indeed. She took off Mrs. Trout’s clothes and slid into a chemise. It was insubstantial, nothing more solid than the film on top of scalded milk, just the thing to give a laundress an apoplexy. Next she wriggled into one of the dresses. It was a shade of dark bluish gray that looked like wet slate.
And it fit. Had Alistair actually gone to a dress shop in—Charity really had no idea where they were, other than Bedfordshire—and described Charity’s dimensions? Had he used his hands to sketch out her measurements? “About so wide across the shoulders, with breasts no bigger than duck eggs.” If so, he had done a decent job of it. He must have memorized her body the couple of times he had seen it up close.
That wasn’t at all the thing to think about right now, though.
The fabric felt smooth against her skin. She had gotten spoiled by her fine London clothes; Mrs. Trout’s homespun felt like sandpaper by comparison. The chemise’s soft linen was a blessed relief, and the cambric of the gown skimmed over her body in a mostly unobjectionable way.
“You look well in that.” It was Louisa. Her eyes were open and she had turned her head slightly on the pillow to gaze at Charity.
“I feel like an idiot.” She felt like she was in costume. But maybe she could think of Louisa’s convalescence as an extended fancy dress party.
“I hope you feel like a pretty idiot, at least.”
Pretty? Of all the nonsense. “It’s from Pembroke.”
“He knows?” She made an effort to sit up in bed, then fell back against the pillows, wincing in pain. “That you’re not a man, I mean.”
“The doctor said you’re not to try sitting until he’s seen you again.” Charity turned her attention to the cuffs of the gown. “He’s known for weeks.” As she fiddled with the gown—it had pockets, she was pleased to discover—she felt Louisa regarding her intently.
“Why ever didn’t you tell me?” she finally said.
Why hadn’t she told Louisa? If she had been frank with Louisa, she might have spared them all this misadventure. “At first, because I didn’t want you to worry about us being discovered. No, wait, before you scold me, because it only gets worse. Later I didn’t tell you because I was going to bed with him.” No sense in making only a half confession.
Louisa’s eyes opened wide. “Charity,” she breathed. “Did he force you?”
“No! Nothing like that!” She sat on the edge of the bed and took one of Louisa’s hands. “I told you I was fond of him.”
Louisa shook her head, which must have caused her pain because she then grimaced. “I knew he was up to no good with you. I knew it! But Gilbert and I thought he was trying to use his influence to persuade you to . . . oh, never mind. I never dreamt that he was coercing you into his bed.”
“He didn’t. I promise. He and I are friends.”
Louisa was silent for several minutes. “I didn’t want to do anything that might get you in trouble with a man like him, especially since you’ve worked so hard and gone to such trouble to give me a chance to marry well. So I thought Gilbert and I could elope, and then it would be done. Nobody could undo it, and it wouldn’t be your fault.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “But now I feel like a fool.”
“So do I. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own affairs, maybe I’d have noticed that you were distressed.” Charity ought to have guessed that Louisa would have a good reason for acting as she did. She grinned as brightly as she could. “Since we both feel embarrassed, let’s just dispense with it altogether. Declare embarrassment bankruptcy, as it were.”
Louisa smiled faintly. “You do look pretty in that dress, though. It’s the color. It does something to your eyes.”
Alistair had said much the same thing about her silver-blue waistcoat, hadn’t he? Had he picked this dress out with that in mind? It was an uncomfortable reminder of the price she might have to pay to be with him: fine chemises and pretty gowns, and a lifetime of feeling like an impostor in her own life. Mrs. Trout stuck her head into the room. “Pardon, ma’am, but I don’t know what to do with the goose.”
“The goose?” Charity and Louisa spoke at the same time.
“The goose as was sent over with the package,” the woman explained.
“A goose? At this time of year?” Louisa asked.
“That’s what I said to Mr. Trout. But he said the Quality may eat geese twelve months a year, for all we know. And if his lordship means for me to kill it and cook it for your supper . . .”
“No, indeed.” It was Louisa who answered, Charity being quite overset by the idea of Alistair acquiring a goose. “I’m quite certain he means it as a present for you and Mr. Trout.”
Charity wasn’t sure at all. Alistair was far more likely to consider a goose as dinner rather than livestock. But she didn’t want to help kill or pluck the goose, so she didn’t argue.
“Well,�
� Mrs. Trout said. “That’s kind of him, and after he gave me all those coins last night, too. He didn’t even count them out, but I did, and it was two pounds, five shillings, and sixpence. It goes to show, I told Mr. Trout, that even though his lordship has a face like he smelled something terrible, you can’t judge from appearances. I’m sure the gentleman can’t help what he looks like, now, can he?”
Stunned, and in alarming danger of succumbing to fits of laughter, Charity stepped outside for a turn around the barnyard while Louisa and their hostess discussed the care and keeping of poultry.
Really, it was provoking that at such a short distance from London, one could find no traces of civilization. Gilbert might as well have turned his carriage over in the middle of the Pyrenees or on the surface of the moon.
After confirming that Gilbert was as well as could be expected, but had been given a sleeping draught and therefore could not be removed from the doctor’s house until the morrow, Alistair retired to an inn that hardly even aspired to mediocrity. There was a large coaching inn a few miles north, and another a few miles south, at either of which Alistair could likely find a bed that he wouldn’t need to share with fleas or mice, but if he wanted to be within an easy walk of Charity and Gilbert, he would need to stay at the godforsaken Duck and Dragon.
He woke at dawn and took himself to the market town of Biggleswade, which, after a night in Little Hatley, now took on the appearance of a thriving metropolis. He posted several letters, visited the dressmaker and bookshop, conducted a few errands of his own, and returned to Little Hatley to collect Gilbert from the doctor’s house.
Gilbert, climbing into Alistair’s curricle, looked like the cat who got the cream. Nobody who had managed to overturn his carriage on such a useless stretch of road ought to look so smug, especially with his arm in a sling.
“What in God’s name were you thinking, running off with that girl?” Alistair offered by way of greeting. “Do you really think me some kind of Bluebeard, luring innocent girls to their doom?”
Unmasked by the Marquess Page 17
