“Probably not,” she admitted.
He looked around at the warm, crowded ballroom. At the clump of gentlemen around a decked-out Millicent, at the couples dancing the country dances, at the servants circling with glasses of champagne. “We’ve done our duty. Everyone here has seen you.”
“Everyone except Colonel and Mrs. Ogley.” Clarice turned her smooth, calm face to him. “There’s no avoiding them, Robert. I must speak to him directly. If this charade is to work, he must have no doubt that I’m here in the ballroom.”
Ogley would believe the princess wished to admire him. Ogley watched Clarice as if he had only to reach out and take her, and Robert had seen him act on his baser impulses before. Tragedy followed.
But not this time.
“Very well.” Touching the middle of Clarice’s back, Robert guided her toward the crowd around the colonel and Mrs. Ogley. Clarice moved closer to him as if for protection. Looking at her smiling profile, Robert knew he would do anything to protect her.
Waldemar had volunteered to make sure that Colonel Ogley did nothing to harm Clarice in her disguise as Carmen. After meeting her, Waldemar had begged to be allowed to escape without the necessary papers. But both Robert and Waldemar knew that if he did so, he could never return to England without taking the chance of being caught and prosecuted as a deserter—and hanged.
For all of his criminal background, Robert had come to know Waldemar as one of the greatest men he’d ever met, and he wanted Waldemar to have the honors due to him, to have a chance at a peaceful life or an adventurous life or even an honest life, if he wished it. Now, with every step, with every moment, they all moved closer to the denouement. Robert and Waldemar, Ogley and Clarice. They would be actors in the play Robert had written, and God help them all if they failed to convince Ogley that Senora Carmen Menendez had truly followed him from Spain armed with a thirst for vengeance and the tools to extract it.
“Mrs. Ogley, how lovely you look tonight.” Robert bowed to the thin, flat-chested, plain woman clinging to Ogley’s arm.
“Thank you, my lord. What a magnificent ball you’ve given in honor of Oscar.” Mrs. Ogley’s wide eyes glowed.
“It’s a privilege to pay tribute to such a hero.” Robert stopped one of the circling footmen. “Your glass is almost empty, Colonel Ogley. Have another.”
“Thank you.” Ogley grinned into Robert’s face as if relishing Robert’s disdain.
“I understand there’ll be fireworks later,” Mrs. Ogley said.
“So there will,” Robert replied.
“Lord Hepburn says that nothing is too great to celebrate Colonel Ogley’s heroism.” Clarice lavished admiration from her amber eyes on Ogley.
With heavy gallantry Colonel Ogley said, “Then perhaps you’ll do this hero the honor of performing the next quadrille with me.”
“I shouldn’t.” Clarice dithered when Robert knew damned good and well she should refuse. “I twisted my ankle today, but…this is the only opportunity I shall ever have of dancing with a hero. Yes, Colonel Ogley, I will be delighted to dance with you.”
Robert made an aborted move to stop them. She was right. If Ogley danced with her, that would reinforce his belief, when he confronted Carmen, that Clarice was in the ballroom. But he didn’t want Ogley to touch her, not even her hand.
Ogley knew it, too, and cast a triumphant glance at Robert as he led her onto the floor to join the set that was forming.
The fawning crowd that surrounded the hero moved away to watch.
Mrs. Ogley said, “What a lovely couple they make.”
With a start Robert realized he should ask her to dance—and he hadn’t danced since his return from the Peninsula.
But before he could, Mrs. Ogley said, “Oscar loves to dance, and I’m dreadful at it. I can’t remember the moves, and I have no sense of rhythm. He shows great patience with me, but I’m hopeless.”
“I must confess, I’m hopeless also.” Furthermore, Robert wanted to stay right there and keep an eye on Ogley. Ogley, who made Clarice uncomfortable with his lascivious interest.
But after a moment Robert realized a good host would be making conversation. If only he remembered how. Looking sideways at Mrs. Ogley, he saw her examining him with open curiosity.
“You don’t look like a spoiled young lord,” she pronounced.
“Don’t I?” She was frank, franker than he had expected.
“Not at all, and that was what Oscar called you. Was he jealous?” When Robert didn’t answer right away, she continued. “Because I know he gets his little megrims about people, and I think you’re one of them. His manservant, Waldemar, is another.”
“Oh?” Robert wondered if Ogley had suggested she find out what she could from him…but no. Ogley would never trust a woman with such a mission. So what was her objective?
“When we get done with this victory tour and retire to our country estates, I’m going to urge Oscar to get a new manservant.”
Jolted, Robert asked, “Really? Why?” They were retiring to their country estates? He wondered if Ogley knew about that.
Choosing her words with care, she said, “Not everyone realizes it, but Oscar can be petty, and I would rather he didn’t have the chance to be so.”
She was smarter than Robert had realized, wiser about her husband, and he didn’t suppose it was mere coincidence that she confessed these things to him. She knew more than she let on—to him, and most definitely to Ogley. “What will happen to Waldemar?”
“I don’t care. I think if ill treated, he could be dangerous, so I suppose Ogley will have him sent to another regiment. Oh, dear!” She stared wide-eyed at the dance floor. “Princess Clarice is hurt.”
“Oh!” Robert clearly heard Clarice’s exclamation. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Colonel Ogley, but I can’t continue.”
The lines of the country dance faltered as she limped away on Ogley’s arm, then reformed with new vigor amid a wave of sympathetic murmurs.
“Dear, dear.” Mrs. Ogley hurried forward, Robert at her side, and met Ogley and Clarice as they exited the dance floor. “Your Highness, can I help you?”
“I feel so foolish, making a scene.” Clarice leaned heavily on Ogley’s arm and limped as if she were in pain. “Could I prevail upon you to take me to a quiet alcove where I could recover in solitude?”
Robert recognized a cue when he heard one. “This way, Your Highness. In the window seat you’ll be able to put your ankle up, pull the curtains, yet peek out and watch the dancing if you wish.”
“That’s grand.” Clarice smiled at him, her lush lower lip quivering bravely. “Thank you so much, my lord.”
“I’ll get you some punch.” He turned away before he gave in to the inappropriate desire to laugh.
How did she do that? Take a moment fraught with tension and transform it into a reason for merriment. And how did she make him want her when his whole being should be concentrated on making this operation run smoothly? He didn’t understand himself anymore, and he was almost grateful to the people who stopped him to question him about Princess Clarice’s well-being. They distracted and annoyed him enough so that by the time he returned with the punch and some biscuits, he could effectively place the plate in Clarice’s hands with crisp disinterest.
She accepted it and waved him and the hovering Mrs. Ogley away. “Go on and enjoy yourselves. I’ll be fine here by myself for a while. Later I’ll slip away to beg a cold compress for my ankle.”
Colonel Ogley stood outside the alcove, looking eager to get away from any hint of injury and back to the adulation he enjoyed so much, and when Mrs. Ogley tucked her hand in his arm, he led her away without a backward glance.
Robert fussed with the curtain for a moment, closing it almost all the way. “Well done,” he said. “Are you ready for the next act?”
Clarice took an audible breath, and when she answered, her voice was low, husky, and tinged with a strong Spanish accent. “I am ready, my lord. I will not fail you.”
Pretty is as pretty does, but ugly goes right t’ the bone.
—THE OLD MEN OF FREYA CRAGS
If Ogley hadn’t been watching Hepburn, he wouldn’t have seen Waldemar sneak into the ballroom, sidle up to his old commander, and speak with an animation Ogley thought he had beaten out of his lowborn aide. This looked ominous, especially when Hepburn nodded abruptly and left the party with Waldemar at his side.
Ogley hadn’t forgotten the sighting of Carmen, and he didn’t really believe he was having delusions. She was there. For some reason the bitch was there and Hepburn knew about it. Ogley should have suspected this. Hepburn was jealous, wanting the honors Ogley had taken as his own, so he and Waldemar were planning something.
Well. They couldn’t put one over on Oscar Ogley. He would stop them before they had a chance to bring their scheme to fruition.
And if it wasn’t her, if the occasional twinge of guilt led him to see Carmen where she wasn’t…then undoubtedly they were up to a different kind of conspiracy. An intelligent man like himself could always profit from other men’s mischief.
Brenda broke into his musing. “Oscar, you have a most peculiar smile on your face.”
“Yes. Thank you. It is nice, isn’t it?” He wasn’t making sense, and carefully he placed his champagne glass on a tray. Perhaps he shouldn’t have indulged in quite so much of the excellent beverage. “If you’ll excuse me, I shall go and get some air.”
Tugging at her gloves, she said, “I’ll go with you.”
“No!” he snapped. As she drew back, he softened his tone. “I mean, you can’t come where I’m going, Brenda.”
“Ah.” She nodded wisely. “I hope you feel better when you return.”
He wanted to correct her, but sometimes when Brenda looked at him, it was as if she saw more deeply into his soul than he wished.
So with a bow he escaped from the ballroom, arriving in the doorway in time to see Hepburn and Waldemar whisk around a corner toward the darkened center of the house. He followed their voices through the winding corridors, remaining back far enough that they were oblivious to his presence.
After all, they were not the only expert trackers here.
They ended up in Robert’s candlelit study, and luckily for Ogley, that coarse imbecile Waldemar didn’t quite shut the door behind them.
Their voices grew louder, but they weren’t speaking to each other. They were speaking to someone else, someone who they were trying to bully.
Oh, this was very interesting. Ogley shifted closer.
Then he recognized a voice he hadn’t heard for over a year. A voice he had hoped never to hear again.
Warm and womanly. Husky with the smoke of thin Spanish cigars. Heavily accented. Carmen’s voice. “You tell me I cannot come to the ball, yet what reason have I to stay apart?”
In revulsion Ogley staggered back against the wall. He put his hand to his chest above his rapidly beating heart.
She blathered on. “I will go and speak to her, to his skinny, pale wife, and tell her what he has done to me.”
As Ogley sneaked along the corridor until he could peek into the half-opened doorway, he tried to reassure himself. She won’t do it. Then, remembering how she had looked, so sick and wild with grief, when he had told her he was returning to England and cared not a whit what happened to her or their child, he changed that to—They won’t let her do it. But Hepburn and Waldemar despised him. Trying desperately to get his breath, he let his hand stray to the dagger he kept on him for just such an occasion as this. I’ll stop her.
It was her. She stood there in her azure strumpet gown, her black hair dressed in its familiar chignon, the inevitable lace mantilla draping her bare shoulders and partially swathing her face. The light was low, but he saw her pace in that patient, steady walk toward the desk where Hepburn stood, and Ogley wanted to run into the room, dagger lifted, and slash her to ribbons before she could destroy his life. Only one thing—no, two—kept him from it. Neither Waldemar nor Hepburn would allow him to bestow justice as it should be rendered.
“He left me with nothing. I am noble, but my family, they will have nothing to do with me because of my disgrace.” Ogley heard a thump as Carmen pounded her chest with her fist. Melodramatic as always.
Damn her.
He wiped a trickle of sweat off his forehead and tried to think. He had to think.
So it was true. Hepburn, that troublemaker, had brought her here.
“What will his skinny, pale wife say when I tell her how I wandered the countryside, my baby in my arms? His baby.” Carmen’s voice vibrated with passion.
And Ogley wanted to spit in disdain. Ridiculous, silly exaggeration, and so he would tell Brenda.
But he couldn’t fool himself. If Carmen actually managed to get her claws into Brenda…if she told her of their liaison, worse, of their child, he would be served with separation papers and left out in the cold to starve. Brenda adored him, but he never made the mistake of thinking she would put up with such a betrayal.
And she was a woman. She might take Carmen’s side, say that if he was going to roger some dirty foreigner, he should have provided for her later. As if he should pay for services when he no longer received them!
Carmen’s voice continued on and on, driving stakes into his head. “My little Anna has no papa. The other children make fun of her, they call her a bastard.”
Brenda wanted his child. If she found out he had abandoned a daughter…his armpits grew so wet they stained his uniform.
Carmen’s voice lowered to a sad croon. “And sometimes my baby cries from hunger.”
Ogley couldn’t stand it anymore. All those damned histrionics. Ridiculous, absurd melodrama. Slamming through the door, he pointed his finger at the three shocked faces turned to him. “You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you.”
Carmen started toward him, hand raised, but Waldemar caught her arm. She turned on him like the virago she was, but Hepburn said, “Senorita, no! I will handle this.”
Flipping out her fan, she held it in front of her face and flapped it in a fury while her amber eyes flashed with…how odd. Ogley had thought her eyes were a deep brown. But hell! What did the color of one woman’s eyes, more or less, matter in the end? With a shrug that rudely dismissed her, he turned to Hepburn. Hepburn was the puppet master here. Only Hepburn mattered.
Hepburn gestured to Waldemar, who kept a hard grip on Carmen’s arm and hustled her toward the door. Ogley stepped back, but her skirts brushed against his legs. A wave of perfume made of fresh flowers and sweet spices washed over him, and she hissed “Bastardo” in a venomous tone.
He swung after her, staring as Waldemar pushed her down the corridor, then turned back to Hepburn. “I demand to see Carmen alone.”
“No. Oh, no.” Hepburn laughed lightly, scornfully. “What are you going to do, kill her?”
And because the thought had crossed his mind, Ogley flushed an ugly red.
“No,” Hepburn said, “I promised her that you’re not going to see her alone and intimidate her. She wants to knock you off your pedestal with all these people watching, and I can’t think of one reason why I shouldn’t let her.”
Ogley could feel the spit gathering at the corners of his lips and drying. “My wife.”
“Will be shocked and stunned to hear that you kept a mistress, I’m sure.”
“She’ll understand.” Ogley didn’t convince even himself. And what if Carmen betrayed the truth about the real Hero of the Peninsula? It was bad enough to think of all the people who had gathered to honor him turning away. But for Brenda, who admired him, it would be a shock from which she would never recover. A shock from which his marriage would never recover. A shock from which his pocketbook…it didn’t bear thinking of!
“Mrs. Ogley will be more appalled and stunned to discover you ruined a young lady of good family.” Hepburn hammered his words home. “That you lied to Carmen about being married, that you abandoned her w
ith nothing for her efforts but an illegitimate child.”
“It was only a daughter.” Worthless things, daughters.
Hepburn tapped the edge of his desk. “You haven’t given your wife a child, have you?”
Ogley swiped at the edges of his mouth, trying to make himself look suave and debonair when in fact he was desperate. Perhaps an appeal would help, man to man. “I would have left Carmen a stipend, but I don’t hold the purse strings in the family. Every year I have to go to Brenda’s father for an allowance. Surely you see I couldn’t afford to pay Carmen.”
Hepburn, that rich, noble swine, did not relent. “You could have given her the earnings off that book you published.”
Ogley was trapped. Trapped by nothing more important than a little pussy taken because he wanted it. Taken what was rightfully his.
He went berserk with frustration. He slammed his fist into the wall, then cradled it under his arm as he paced in a froth of temper.
Hepburn stood immobile as if Ogley’s fury impressed him not at all.
“Don’t lie to me, Hepburn.” Ogley pointed at him. “You set this up. You planned this ball especially with the view to ruin me.”
Hepburn didn’t deny it. The swine. The crazy, ungrateful swine.
Ogley raged toward him. “You envy me because I took your heroism and your exploits as my own.”
“I don’t give a damn whether anyone knows who really detonated the French ammunition depot. But I have something in common with Carmen.”
Spitefully Ogley said, “Yes, I screwed you both.”
Hepburn didn’t flinch. “Worse than that. You lied to me. You made a promise that you didn’t keep.”
For a moment Ogley didn’t know what Hepburn was talking about. Then he remembered, and the light dawned. In an incredulous tone he said, “This is about Waldemar? You want me to release Waldemar?”
Some Enchanted Evening Page 24
