“You’re extraordinarily pensive tonight, my friend,” Stamden said. “You haven’t quarreled with the duchess again, have you?”
“No.”
“You’ve reach an understanding then?”
“Of sorts.”
“But not the one you had hoped for when last we talked?”
“Far from it,” Devon said, then abandoning his pride added, “She refuses to marry me, even though I’ve assured her I care nothing about her shady background—and devil take it, I don’t. Not anymore. She is the most honest, courageous, compassionate woman I have ever met, as well as the most intelligent. I feel nothing but respect for her.”
He tossed off the balance of the brandy in his glass and poured himself another. “Damn it, Stamden. I love the woman and I know she loves me. Yet she claims she cannot marry me.”
Stamden looked thoughtful. “Cannot or will not?”
Devon thought back on the impassioned declaration Moira had made that morning. “Cannot. In fact, now that I think of it, she even went so far as to say she cannot marry any man.” He stared at his friend, thunderstruck, as the truth hit him. “Of course, that’s it! There has to be something in her past I don’t know—a missing piece of the puzzle that makes her think she is ineligible for marriage.”
“That would be my guess,” Stamden said. “But what it could be, I cannot begin to imagine.” He viewed Devon with sympathetic eyes. “Have you thought, my friend, that whatever she is hiding may well be something that is better off kept secret? The duchess is not some missish female to make much ado about nothing.”
“But how can I determine in what way to handle the problem until I know what it is?” Devon rose from his chair and paced the length of the book-lined room, stopping to stare momentarily out the bay window looking over a small, formal garden.
“Blackjack must know,” he mused more to himself than to Stamden. “I’ll pry it out of the old reprobate if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
Stamden flexed his fingers absentmindedly. “It’s possible, but I wouldn’t count on it. They don’t seem close enough to be confidants.”
“No, they don’t,” Devon agreed. “But despite his cavalier attitude, he must have some feeling for her. Enough at least to want to see her happily married. He’s her father, for God’s sake.”
“Fatherhood does not necessarily endow a man with deep sentiment,” Stamden said matter-of-factly. “I contracted lung fever when I was twelve years old and when the quack attending me declared I was dying, my mother sent for my father. He informed her that he’d made arrangements to spend a fortnight at Lord Wilmot’s hunting box in Suffolk and couldn’t beg off.”
“Still I have to start somewhere and Blackjack Reardon is as good a place as any,” Devon replied, withholding comment on his friend’s revealing story rather than embarrass him with his pity. His own father would have ridden day and night to be at his side.
He stood staring out at the garden, but seeing only Moira’s face in his mind’s eye—her passion-flushed cheeks when he’d kissed her, her beautiful eyes darkened with emotion when she’d told him of her vision, the fear reflected in them when she’d warned him of the danger she saw awaiting him in London.
When she’d told him of her vision. He turned from the window as a sudden thought flashed through his mind. “You once called Moira ‘a fey creature’ after that incident in the park when she apparently had a vision that Charles and I were about to be attacked. What if she has these visions often? Wouldn’t that tend to make her think she’s different? Maybe even explain her tendency toward reclusion?”
“Not if it was only a one-time thing,” Stamden said. “We’ve all had inexplicable hunches on occasion. I recall one of yours at Salamanca that saved both our lives.”
“I think it may be a common happening with her. Just this morning she told me she’d had a vision of Wellington calling me to London because ‘the unbelievable had happened and the situation was very grave.’ She also warned me that Quentin would make an attempt on my life while I was there, and she was deadly serious about the entire business.”
Stamden drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair in which he sat. “I suppose that could be it, far-fetched as it may seem. If she is truly a clairvoyant, she must feel like some kind of freak—a misfit outside the normal parameters of society.” He grimaced. “I know the feeling well. Maybe that’s why I’ve felt such empathy for her since the first moment we met.”
“I’m going to confront her with it tomorrow,” Devon said. “If this mysterious second sight of hers is all that is keeping us apart—and I cannot but feel it is—I must make her understand I am willing to live with it.” He managed a sickly grin. “Though I can see how it might be a bit off-putting for the average man.”
“Everything about the duchess, except her extraordinary beauty, would be off-putting for an average man,” Stamden said, grinning back. “Who but a cockeyed egotist with a tendency toward self-destruction would dare take a woman to wife who was as smart as an Oxford professor, as courageous as a Northumberland fusilier, and as handy with a knife as a Spanish camp follower…not to mention one who had the ability to foretell what lay in his future? As I’ve mentioned before, I firmly believe you two are meant for each other.”
“My thought exactly,” Devon said, his grin widening. “And so I shall tell her before another sun sets over Cornwall.”
He had risen to pace the room, too keyed up to sit still, when Partridge knocked discreetly, then opened the door. “A Sergeant Evans to see you, my lord. I told him you were engaged, but he says he carries an urgent message from Whitehall which he must deliver to you personally.”
“Send him in by all means,” Devon said, an eerie presentiment assailing him. He glanced at Stamden, whose narrowed eyes held the same questions that were racing through his brain.
The sergeant was a thin, wiry fellow of indeterminate age with a thatch of sun-bleached hair and skin the color of leather. He had obviously ridden long and hard; he looked near collapse. “Captain Higgins said I was to get this to you posthaste, my lord,” he croaked from between cracked, dust-caked lips, and handed Devon a small oilskin-wrapped packet.
Devon quickly poured him a glass of brandy and watched the crusty veteran toss it back in one gulp. “I’ll put the sergeant in your capable hands, Partridge,” he said to his waiting butler. “A hot bath, a good meal, and a soft bed in that order, if you please.”
He waited until Stamden and he were alone, then tore open the letter. “It’s from Higgins all right,” he said. “Three short paragraphs obviously written in haste.” He read it aloud. “The unbelievable has happened and the situation is extremely grave.”
Devon’s heart thundered in his chest. Moira’s very words. He raised his head and met Stamden’s startled gaze.
“Uncanny,” Stamden said. “Read on for God’s sake. What else does Higgins have to say?”
“The Corsican Monster escaped from Elba on March first and landed at the Gulf of Juan with a small force, which our informants report is swelling daily.” Devon cursed obscenely before continuing. “Rumor is he will be in Paris, with a sizeable army, before the first of April and ready to reclaim France.”
Devon sank onto the nearest chair, sick with shock and disbelief that the horror could be beginning all over again. With aching heart, he read the last paragraph. “I trust you will impart this information to Colonel Stamden, whom I know is residing with you at present. Wellington needs the help of all his officers who have faced Bonaparte’s legions before.”
He handed the missive to Stamden and watched the same stunned incredulity as he was feeling spread across his friend’s ravished face. “The power-crazed lunatic will see every Frenchman dead before he gives up his dream of ruling as Emperor of all Europe,” Stamden said. “He must be stopped once and for all.”
“And disposed of like the rabid beast he is,” Devon agreed.
Wearily, Stamden rubbed his hand over his eyes. “I mus
t bid Elizabeth goodbye first thing tomorrow morning. Then I’ll be ready to ride with you to London.”
“And I must speak my piece to Moira,” Devon said. “If by any chance, I should not return from this mission, I would want her to know that, whatever she may be, she was truly loved.”
Devon found Moira, shortly after seven o’clock the following morning in the kitchen garden of White Oaks, on her knees, digging a shallow trench with a small flat-bladed trowel. It was a strange thing for a duchess to be doing; somehow, it seemed appropriate for Moira.
At first he wasn’t certain it was she. Her face was shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat that had seen better days and her usual somber black gown was so covered with dust, he thought she must be a local widow hired to help the gardeners with their weeding. She was gloveless and so engrossed in her task, she failed to hear him until he stood directly in front of her.
She looked up, a startled expression on her face. “Devon! You are out and about at an early hour.” She flushed. “You have found me out. I am a peasant at heart. I love the feel of rich, black soil on my fingers.”
“I have suspected something of the kind for some time, madam,” he said, squatting down on his haunches beside her. “But still you take me unawares. I have seen titled ladies gathering flowers from their gardens to arrange bouquets, but I confess I have never before seen one planting vegetables.” He grinned. “A great part of your charm is that you constantly surprise me, my love.”
“I am not your love,” she said severely.
“An arguable point and one I intend to pursue more fully when I return.”
“You are going away? But of course you are. I can see you are dressed for the road.” Her eyes clouded with sudden anxiety. “Wellington has summoned you, then?”
“Exactly as you predicted; almost to the very words, in fact. It is enough to make the staunchest skeptic a believer in visions.” Devon rose to his feet and gave her a hand up. “It seems Bonaparte has escaped Elba and is gathering an army to begin the holocaust all over again.”
“Oh, no!” Moira pressed her fingers to her lips to keep from uttering the cry rising in her throat. “But surely Lord Wellington cannot expect you to go into battle again—not after all you have been through.”
“I don’t know what he expects; nor does Stamden. But whatever it is, we cannot refuse him. The fate of England, indeed all of Europe, is in jeopardy, and he is the one man who can save us from the clutches of the Corsican madman.”
He surveyed her face with grave eyes. “Walk with me where we can be alone for a few minutes,” he said softly. “I have already said goodbye to Charles; I want to say it to you in private, and I can see eyes peering at us from the kitchen window.”
Moira managed a small smile, despite the paralyzing fear invading her limbs. “Cook is a dear soul, but a dreadful snoop.”
Devon chuckled. “She would have much in common with Partridge, my butler. I am surprised the old fellow doesn’t have the permanent imprint of a keyhole on his earlobe.”
He offered Moira his arm, and she led him through the gate of the wall surrounding the kitchen garden and around a corner of the massive stone manor house to a small garden at the base of the rear terrace.
“This looks familiar,” he said a few moments later. “Unless I am mistaken, there is a water-spurting fish beyond that next clump of trees which was privy to one of the less glorious moments in my career as an accomplished rake.”
Moira stopped short, smiling in spite of herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. This is my favorite garden and the only one that is really private.” She felt a flush creep up her neck and into her cheeks. “In case you had it in mind to kiss me goodbye, that is.”
“I do indeed have it in mind, my love, as well you know. Or is mind reading outside the scope of your mystic powers?”
“I have no mystic powers. Only the one gift that has been given the women in my mother’s family for generations—the ability to sense when someone we love is in danger,” Moira said without thinking.
Devon’s eyes held a devilish twinkle. “Gave yourself away there didn’t you, sweetheart?” he said triumphantly. “So, you are indeed one of the fey Irish. I suppose next you’ll be telling me you consort with pixies and leprechauns.”
His expression sobered. “Which brings to mind what I want to say before I take my leave of you. I do not care if you are a mystic or a clairvoyant or even a witch, my darling. I love you and I want you to be my wife and the mother of my children.”
Moira felt as if a great crack had opened in her heart. “You do not know what you are saying, Devon. In truth, there is much you do not know of me. I see now I must tell you, no matter the consequences.” She sighed. “And tell you I will when you return. There can be no more secrets between us.”
“No more secrets,” he said, and drawing her into his arms, lowered his lips to hers in a kiss so tender and so deeply passionate, she felt as if his soul had somehow fused with hers. Groaning low in his throat, he slid his hands to her hips, fitting her womanly softness to the hard evidence of his need. Desire raced through her and for one brief, ecstatic moment she gave herself up to the wonder of the myriad sensations Devon’s taste and touch and scent evoked in her.
“I love you,” he whispered, and the crack in her heart widened.
“I love you,” she answered because she could not send him away without just once saying the words. But the fierce tenderness mirrored on his handsome face left her sick with despair at the hopelessness of that love.
Long after the sound of his horse’s hoof beats was only an echo in her ears, Moira stood where he had left her, feeling as empty and desolate as if he had plucked her heart from her breast and packed it in the sturdy saddlebag thrown over the rump of his horse.
She spent the rest of the day alternating between comforting a distraught Elizabeth and assuring Charles that his guardian had meant every word when he’d promised he would not die for a long, long time. And all the while she concealed her own agony beneath a frozen smile and a cheerful voice that even to her own ears sounded ridiculously false.
It was past midnight, when after tossing and turning for hours, she crept from her bed and returned to the kitchen garden. On her knees, by the light of a single candle, she painstakingly planted her seeds, one by one in the rich, black, life-giving soil…and watered them with the tears she could no longer keep from flowing.
Whitehall was a beehive of activity the morning Devon and Stamden arrived, but they were immediately ushered past the scores of waiting supplicants and into the austerely furnished office of the Foreign Minister. Lord Castlereagh greeted them warmly. “Welcome, my lords. You must have ridden day and night to cover the distance from Cornwall to London in such time.”
He bade them be seated and, as was Castlereagh’s custom, got right to the point. “Wellington is in Brussels mobilizing his armies; he asked me to enlist your aid in his name. But first I must ask your assurance the comments I am about to make will never go beyond this room.”
Devon raised an indignant eyebrow. “I am astonished you felt you needed to ask, my lord.”
“Of course, I apologize. These are trying times. One finds oneself becoming cautious to a fault.” Castlereagh leveled his famous, piercing gaze first on Devon, then on Stamden. “Let me first state unequivocally that in my opinion Wellington is the most brilliant military commander in His Majesty’s service.”
“You’ll find no argument from either of us on that score,” Stamden said.
“I thought not. The only men who served under him on the Peninsular who did not like his tactics were those who shirked their duty. He has no patience with shirkers and no tolerance for cowards. As a result, he made enemies of a few weak, but dangerous, men along the way.”
He paused, as if to gather his thoughts. “A man with enemies cannot afford to make mistakes, and Wellington made one recently—one of the few serious mistakes in an otherwise glorious career.”
D
evon exchanged a quick, telling look with Stamden before addressing the Foreign Secretary. “No man is infallible, my lord,” he said stiffly, “but the duke comes closer than most. If you summoned us here to listen to criticism of him, you have the wrong men in mind. Our loyalties lie with our former commander.”
Castlereagh shook his head. “You misunderstand my motives, my lords. Arthur Wellesley is closer to me than my own brothers. I have only his welfare at heart in sharing such information with you. It was I who arranged the duke’s appointment as British ambassador to France last May and in February of this year saw him dispatched to the Congress of Vienna as His Majesty’s representative. He filled both positions admirably…with one notable exception.
He opened the upper right-hand drawer of his desk and removed a sheet of paper. “Upon hearing of Bonaparte’s escape from Elba, he sent this dispatch to the British Home Office.”
Castlereagh handed the paper to Devon, one sentence of which was underlined with a bold black line: “Bonaparte has acted upon false or no information and the forces of Louis XVIII will destroy him without difficulty and in a short time.”
Devon read the cryptic message, then handed it to Stamden, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He and his men and once captured a platoon of French infantrymen and their officer and held them for a sen’night before they could turn them over to the British command. He had learned much about the French mentality before that week was over, including the fact that hatred for the Bourbons was a boil on the rump of the average Frenchman that neither the horrors of the Revolution nor the despotism of the Little Emperor had lanced.
“Unfortunately”—the Foreign Minister’s voice was grim—“within hours of receiving that dispatch, we had one from our man in Paris informing us that Louis had fled to Ghent, General Ney and his followers had gone over to Bonaparte, and their armies were on the outskirts of Paris.”
He glowered at the offending missive. “How Wellington would have so misread the French people, I cannot imagine. Nor can I understand what prompted him to underestimate the mesmerizing power of Napoleon Bonaparte. But he did, and his detractors are using it against him—claiming his misjudgment of the situation proves him unfit to lead the British forces in the upcoming battle against the Corsican. Though God knows whom the fools think to put in his place.”
The Gypsy Duchess Page 18
