The Passion of the Purple Plumeria

by Lauren Willig

  Gwen reminded herself that the man behind her knew not what he nuzzled, and with any luck, he wouldn’t remember any of this by the time he woke up. Rather like that kiss the other night, the one where he’d got her confused with some goddess or other.

  If one was going to be confused for anyone, it wasn’t at all unpleasant to be mistaken for a major deity. One wouldn’t at all like to be confused for the lesser sort of deity.

  But a deity known for beauty and good fortune? That was . . . gratifying. Yes, gratifying. What with the nuzzling, Gwen was having trouble keeping her train of thought straight. She knew she should remove herself, but the bed was so cozy, so warm.

  It was a long time since anyone had compared her to anything that didn’t breathe fire and sport sharp claws.

  Tim had written poetry to her once. Sonnets, odes, sestinas. She hadn’t been particular about the form. It had been enough that he was writing poetry to her, about her. She had taken it as her due, believing every exaggerated simile, believing that her skin was like pearl, her hair black silk, her eyes daggers in Cupid’s own arsenal. Aphrodite, he had called her, the first time he persuaded her out of her clothes—not that she’d taken all that much persuading.

  It was all a sham, of course, like the rest of Tim’s avowals. She was sure he’d presented the exact same verses to the heiress he’d married two months later, changing jetty locks for curls of gold and ebony eyes for azure, or some such rot.

  If one thing was constant, it was the inconstancy of the male sex. A man could nuzzle and nuzzle and still be untrue.

  With that salutary reminder, Gwen plunked the Colonel’s arm off her waist and neatly extracted herself from his sleepy embrace. It was very cold outside the nest of blankets. Bracing—that was what it was. Bracing. Her neck still tingled from the nuzzling. Gwen ruthlessly rubbed it with the heel of her hand, scrubbing the memory away. She flung herself down on the chair by the bed, yanking on her stockings, then her half boots, all the armor of her daily garb.

  There were mumblings and rustlings from the bed. The Colonel burrowed deeper into the pillow, one brown arm flung over his head, before emerging, tousled and sleepy. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes heavy with sleep, his hair any which way.

  “Good morning,” he said, smiling at her.

  If this had been another set of circumstances, she might have smoothed the tousled hair from his brow. She might have leaned forwards and pressed her lips against that smile, might have let herself be lured back into the sleep-warmed nest of the sheets.

  But that was all a world ago. The girl who might have done such things was gone, long ago.

  Gwen hardened her heart and applied herself to lacing up her boots. “Is it?” she said disagreeably. “It looks like rain.”

  “Bother the rain,” said the Colonel expansively. “I feel like I could conquer the world.”

  He stretched his arms out over his head, sending the sheets tumbling down to his waist, revealing the broad expanse of his chest, grizzled with red-white hair and seamed with old scars.

  He winced as the movement made his stitches pull. “Or at least a very small province.”

  “Try getting out of bed first,” said Gwen tartly, but she held out a hand to help him.

  To her surprise, he took it, his large, calloused hand closing tightly around hers. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His breeches dipped before he caught them with his other hand. He wobbled a bit, his legs unused to the job of holding him, and Gwen quickly moved to brace him, one hand against the side of his chest, the side without the bandages. His skin was warm beneath her fingers, not fever hot, but the normal temperature of a healthy male. She could feel his chest rise and fall with his breathing.

  “It’s all right,” he said, half laughing, his breath ruffling her hair. For a moment, he rested his cheek on the top of her head. “I shan’t topple over on you.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” she said, but she stepped back anyway, near enough to catch him if he fell. “I don’t want you bashing your head and keeping us here another five days.”

  His lips quirked. “You’ve a gallant soul, Gwen Meadows.”

  She knew it was absurd, but she’d liked it better when he was comparing her to Indian goddesses. Of course, he hadn’t known that she was she, which was entirely beside the point, if she had any idea what the point was meant to be.

  “Gallant is as gallant does,” she said in her best chaperone voice, as starched as a dandy’s collar and as sharp as the point of her sword parasol. “Let’s find you some clothing, shall we?”

  He looked down, seeming to realize his nakedness for the first time. He smiled sheepishly at her. “Er, might you have any idea as to the location of the rest of my clothes? I appear to have lost them while I was sleeping.”

  She shouldn’t be blushing, really she shouldn’t. They were pretend married, after all. And she was a spinster and beyond such things. No matter that those arguments were mutually contradictory. A little bit of illogic in the service of a good cause had never bothered her before.

  “I had to cut your shirt off you,” she said. She busied herself searching through a pile of clothes on the chair, coming up with a plain cambric shirt. “I’ve bought a replacement from the landlord. I’m afraid it’s not very elegant, but it will have to do.”

  “So long as it covers me, I’m not particular.”

  “Yes, I can tell,” said Gwen, holding up his jacket by two fingers.

  William wasn’t offended. “I’m not used to being out of a uniform,” he said. “I’ve no idea what the fashions are.”

  She held out the shirt to him, helping him to guide it over his head. “You won’t get far among society, then.”

  “I’ve no interest in society.” His voice was muffled by the fabric. His rumpled head emerged through the neck hole. “I just mean to collect my girls and—”

  “And?” Gwen held out his jacket to him.

  William just stared at it. “I almost forgot,” he said, in a dazed voice. “I was so happy to be out of that thrice-damned bed, I almost forgot.”

  His voice cracked on the last word and he turned away, making a show of shaking out his jacket.

  Gwen’s heart gave an unexpected spasm of pity. She crushed the urge to reach out to him, to comfort him. Instead, she said, her voice deliberately matter-of-fact, “Is there anyplace else your Lizzy might have gone? Does she have any other family here?”

  “There might be some still in Scotland,” he said, “but I doubt it. They mostly scattered to America.”

  Gwen began efficiently packing her bits and pieces back into her reticule. “What about her mother’s family?”

  William glanced at her sideways, his normally open face guarded. “Lizzy’s mother was from Bengal,” he said.

  “So she won’t have any other relations here, then,” said Gwen briskly. And then, because there were times when plain speaking was one of the benefits of age, “Illegitimate?”

  “Legally,” said William. “Her mother and I never went through any semblance of marriage. But as far as I’m concerned, she’s as true a daughter of mine as Katherine—and that was a marriage presided over by more than one parson!”

  Gwen held up her hands. “Hold your artillery, Colonel! I’m not casting aspersions on your daughter. Or her birth. The world would be a better place if every man stood by his leavings.” She had spoken a bit too vehemently. She said hastily, “What about her other siblings?”

  The Colonel still looked ready to do battle. “Are they illegitimate, too, do you mean?”

  “No. What does that have to do with anything? Other than your conscience.” Having scored her point, she went on, “Would your Lizzy have contacted any of them?”

  William shook his head. “The boys are all in India. There’s Alex, Kat’s twin, who’s assistant to the Resident of Hyderabad, and George, Lizzy’s full brother, who’s in the service of the Begum Sumroo—she’s a sort of queen, you might say.”


  “You left out the opium trader.”

  “I don’t know that he’s still trading opium,” said William. “As far as I know, he’s in India still.”

  “As far as you know?”

  “We’re estranged,” he said briefly. “Last I heard, he was in the service of one of the Maratha chieftains—you won’t have heard the name.”

  “Won’t I?” Gwen couldn’t resist showing off. “Holkar, perhaps? Or Scindia?”

  William raised his sandy brows. “You’re very well informed.”

  “Just because I wear a skirt doesn’t mean I can’t read a paper,” she said.

  “My apologies. I should know better than to underestimate you.”

  “Yes, you should.”

  He didn’t know the half of it. For a mad moment, Gwen wondered if she were doing him a disservice by not telling him about the other powers that might be in play.

  He didn’t need to know about the League of the Pink Carnation, but she could tell him, surely, that there had once been a flap involving French spies at Miss Climpson’s seminary, a flap in which Lizzy had been peripherally involved. It made a reasonable explanation for why a schoolgirl might be the target of French spies, leaving aside the fact that it was more likely Agnes who was the target than his Lizzy.

  The moment the idea occurred to her, so did half a dozen arguments against it. It had been one of the other schoolgirls and her fiancé who had been selling information to the French, information the girl had gleaned from her father, a man high in the government. As far as Gwen knew, the girl and her fiancé were still in custody.

  Besides, once opened, the topic of spies might raise uncomfortable questions. Such as why she carried a sword in her parasol.

  Just because she had tended him for five endless days, attuned to every rasping breath, every fevered utterance, didn’t mean that he was worthy of her trust. What did she know of him, really? She knew every inch of his body—well, almost every inch—she knew his smell, his favorite ribald song, the mumbling noises he made as he slept, but other than that, he might be anything or anyone. He might not even be Colonel William Reid. She had only his own and his supposed older daughter’s word for it. If she was his daughter.

  No. The family resemblance had been too strong to be denied. Kat Reid was William’s daughter. That much was true. It didn’t mean that any of the rest of it was.

  She had come too far to be incautious now.

  “Do you have everything?” she said instead.

  William ran a hand along his chin. “I should like to shave before we go,” he said apologetically. “Lest someone mistake me for a pirate.”

  “You’d need a parrot for that,” said Gwen, “or at least an eye patch.” But she called for the maid all the same.

  The maid bobbed a curtsy as she departed. “Thank you for your custom, Mrs. Fustian. Colonel Fustian.”

  William slanted Gwen a glance from under his brows. “Fustian?”

  Gwen certainly wasn’t going to tell him that it was her usual alias. She gave him a superior look. “It seemed appropriate for someone who speaks so much nonsense as you.”

  William laughed, a great rolling laugh that came from deep in his chest. “I’ve never met anyone who manages to call me to account as you do.”

  Gwen wasn’t sure if that was intended as a compliment. “That,” she said, “is because you bamboozle them all with your flummery.”

  He looked down at her, his eyes a clear, bright blue. “It’s not all flummery.”

  Gwen’s treacherous stomach fluttered. “That is exactly the sort of thing I mean,” she said sternly. “Don’t think you can get around me that way.”

  “I would never be so foolish,” he said solemnly. “Particularly not while you’re holding a blade.”

  They cleared their meager possessions from the room. The tumbled sheets on the bed told a false tale. Gwen took one last look out the window from which she had seen so many sunrises and sunsets. For five days, she had left the room only to summon the maid, to procure food, to demand hot water or cold ale. For five days she had kept vigil over the man beside her, sitting in that chair, lighting and snuffing those candles, cursing the blasted recalcitrant chimney. It felt as though it had been a year, not a mere week, less than a week.

  It had been one thing to nurse him, but now that he was clothed again, now that he was on his feet, she didn’t quite know what to do with him. His clean-shaven face seemed unfamiliar, bare and shiny.

  Once on the stage, it was too crowded to speak privately, or to speak at all, so they sat silently, wedged into a corner of the backwards-facing seat. With every jolt and jostle, the Colonel turned a little bit more gray in the face, his smile a little more strained. He was the Colonel again, Gwen realized. Not William anymore. This clean-faced stranger was the man she had met at Miss Climpson’s, not the man she had nursed through a grueling bout of wound fever.

  And she was Miss Meadows again, armored in respectability. There would be no more fever-stricken kisses, no waking to an arm around her waist.

  She ought to be glad of that. That had been a detour, an aberration. They would return to Bath, find the girls, and she could return to her life in France, a life—she reminded herself—that she had chosen for herself, a life of infinite possibility and power.

  A life of being Miss Wooliston’s fearsome chaperone.

  Despite his obvious weakness, the Colonel insisted on walking her to the Woolistons’ hired house in Laura Place.

  They stood before the front steps, the Colonel’s hat in his hand, Gwen’s parasol dangling from her wrist, neither of them at all sure what to say to the other.

  What did one say to a man to whom one had been pretend married not six hours before?

  Gwen could see the drapes twitch, the butler waiting for her to mount the steps so he could open the door and take her rather battered hat and parasol. There had been a butler who had come with the house. He had been in residence when they arrived. The following day, he had received an unexpected bequest from an unknown cousin and gone off to take a holiday of his own at the spa at Tunbridge Wells.

  Jane took no chances. The new butler was one of their own. He would give her all the time she needed.

  What, exactly, she needed that time for was another question entirely.

  “Well,” said Gwen. “That was certainly an enlivening episode.” When in doubt, resort to sarcasm.

  The Colonel’s wide smile lit his face. Fifty-four and the man still had freckles. They lent him an entirely deceptive air of boyishness.

  “From where I was lying, I’m not sure ‘enlivening’ is the word I would choose.” To Gwen’s surprise, he possessed himself of both her hands, the laughter gone from his blue eyes. “I don’t know how to thank you. You might have left me at that inn, but you didn’t. For that, I shall always be grateful.”

  Gratitude was a weak substitute for any form of true emotion. She would rather have scorn than gratitude. “Reserve your gratitude, sir. It was no more than anyone might have done.”

  “Perhaps. But there aren’t many I would trust to guard my back. May I”—William paused, clasping and unclasping his hands—“call on you tomorrow?”

  There was no reason for her to feel like a girl at a country assembly being asked for her first dance. He had made himself clear. His interest in her was purely that of a comrade at arms.

  “I had assumed you would. We still have two young ladies to find, after all.” Gwen turned and stalked up the stairs, pausing on the top step to add, “Don’t get yourself skewered again in the meantime.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” he said, and then ruined all her composure by adding, with a smile, “Mrs. Fustian.”

  Didn’t he know that she always got the last word?

  “Colonel,” she said grandly. The butler obligingly opened the door and she sailed through. Her grand exit was only somewhat marred by tripping over someone’s walking stick just inside the door.

  “I do beg your pardon,�
�� said the gentleman—Gwen used the term broadly—in a voice that carried the faintest hint of a French accent.

  He looked her up and down, from her bedraggled purple traveling costume to the maltreated hat she had crammed on her dirty hair. “The missing chaperone, I presume?”

  Chapter 12

  When they approached, they saw that the tower was not black at all, but silver, a silver so bright that it hurt their eyes and caused them to shy back. From within the tower there was the ringing of a bell, and a drawbridge came clanging down before them. A man stood on it, caparisoned in silver armor, darkly chased in mysterious designs of gold and ebony. “I am the Knight of the Silver Tower,” quoth he. “What business have you with me?”

  Plumeria liked him not. . . .

  —From The Convent of Orsino by A Lady

  Jane made the introductions. “Miss Gwen, may I present to you the Chevalier de la Tour d’Argent. Chevalier, Miss Gwendolyn Meadows.”

  The Chevalier bowed over her hand, which was considerably the worse for travel. If he noticed the stains on her gloves, he made no sign. “Enchanted, Madame.”

  He might be, but she wasn’t. Gwen thumped her parasol on the ground, dangerously close to the Chevalier’s too-shiny boot. “The Knight of the Silver Tower? What sort of name is that?”

  The Chevalier pressed a hand to his heart. A heavy gold signet ring showed bright against the dark superfine of his jacket. “The name with which my birth burdened me, no less and no more.”

  “There could hardly be more,” contributed Jane, “unless one wished to add a few adjectives to it for ballast.”

  A hint of a dimple appeared in the Chevalier’s cheek as he glanced at Gwen’s charge. “The Knight of the Exceedingly High and Rather Unwieldy Silver Tower? My acquaintances should expire of boredom before the introduction was complete.”

  “If one were to choose a tower,” said Gwen grumpily, “why not gold?”

  “I believe,” said the Chevalier gravely, “that the appellation was originally awarded to a great-great-great-grandparent during the Crusades.”