by Muir, L. L.
His lips moved to her jaw, then her neck. His fingers moved across her shoulder, then traveled along her neckline. She moaned as she remembered back to that encounter in the darkened dressing room, how she’d lost her senses there as well.
His hand froze. He pulled back, but only far enough to set his forehead against her own. His breathing slowed along with hers.
“Marry me, Livvy. Set aside your heroics and be my wife. I beg you.”
“When this is over—”
He interrupted by kissing her again and while he did so, he pulled the blanket over her, tucked it between them, then held her close before ending the kiss.
“I would do anything you asked of me, Livvy. But I am taking back my promise. I will not marry The Scarlet Plumiere. She lives too dangerously. Let her die, with Ursula.” He kissed her forehead, then whispered against it. “Marry me, Olivia Reynolds. Marry me.”
There he was, waving to her from that path she wasn’t to take. She had already made this decision. She knew she must resist that beckoning hand and turn away. But her reasons were different now. This time, running into his arms might cost him his life. Turning away from him would only cost him his pride, and perhaps a very small piece of his heart.
He held very still, waiting for her answer.
“How can I?” She could only whisper. “How can I tell Lord Gordon and the world that the surest way to hurt me is to hurt The Earl of Northwick? I will not do it. Do not ask it of me.”
“Then promise me, just here, just now, between the two of us. Tell me you’ll be mine, Livvy. We will tell no one. But you must give me hope. You must tell me you will never do anything so foolish as you did tonight, sneaking away from your own protection. Dear God, if you had not frozen to death, you would have been at Gordon’s mercy!”
“I would have shot him. I might have ended up at the mercy of the courts, but the rest of you would have been safe.”
“Livvy.” His voice changed. “The pistol misfired. If I had not stopped you, it would have misfired when you aimed it at Gordon—if you’d been able to catch him off guard. Then you would have only succeeded in making him more angry than he was already.”
“Misfired?” She remembered the flare, the smoke. But there had been no painfully loud report. No wonder he thought her so foolish; she had failed to load the weapon properly!
The carriage rolled to a stop. She was home, safe for the moment at least. But none of them were safe for long. After an atrociously long day and night, she’d failed to make any difference whatsoever.
Northwick seemed not to notice they’d arrived.
“Yes, misfired. So now will you give me your promise?”
She pushed away from him and got her feet to the floor before the door opened into the breaking dawn. She lowered one foot to the step, but turned back to answer.
“I believe you would regret it, my lord. Marrying such a fool.”
She hurried into the house without looking back.
***
North dragged himself to bed with a numb head, a numb heart, and his soul had slunk back to wherever it usually went to hide, but this time, without the aid of expensive brandy. He expected it would curl up and die once and for all, now that he would no longer be in need of it.
On the morrow, he would murder Gordon, in cold blood if necessary. On the morrow, he would buy The Scarlet Plumiere a reprieve—a few more years on this Earth, until she enraged the next dangerous man. But next time, he would not be around to protect her.
Peter had lived through the night and given the doctor hope. Ashmoore had left word not to be disturbed unless it was a matter of life or death. The matter of a soul hardly qualified, even if North felt the need to talk about it, which he did not.
The house quieted. The soldiers took advantage of the snowy Sunday, to recover from a battle lost, to store up strength for the battle ahead. Ursula’s funeral. And there was where the war would end, if there was a breath left in him to see to it.
Who gave a hang what happened afterward?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
They gathered in the drawing room early Monday morning. Livvy entered like Bloody Joan of Arc, but instead of chain mail, she was draped in black crepe with a demi-veil already over her eyes. She may as well be bearing the company standard on the end of the lance considering the reaction she got from the room at large.
What were they thinking? That she’d escape them all Saturday night only to save them from the dragon?
Of course they would think just that, damn them. They’d all end up falling on their swords for her before the day was through, if they did not come to their senses.
Good lord, I already planned to do the same!
But there was nothing for it now. He only hoped Saint Joan would be haunted, for a very long time, by the memory of their final embrace.
“Is everyone here then?” She looked around her. “I thought Harcourt would be coming with Stanley and me.”
“He’ll be along,” said Stanley, covering his smile with a hand.
She turned her back as another woman in black entered the room.
“Anna! I did not know you planned to come, but please reconsider. It cannot be safe!”
The figure’s dark brim lifted, but it was Harcourt, not Anna who stood before Livvy.
“We’ve teased about it enough times. ‘Bout time it came in handy.” His voice raised painfully high. “Allow me to introduce my brother, Harcourt.”
Anna walked in dressed in a morning suit, her curls close to her head. If North had not been in on the masquerade, she might have fooled him from across the room.
“I will stand in the rear, so anyone counting Kings will believe they are all accounted for. Besides, there would be no keeping me from this funeral. It will be a crush, I am sure.”
***
Anna was correct. Drury Lane was impossible to penetrate. They eventually gave up and walked the final two blocks to the theatre, she and Harcourt on either side of Stanley. Harcourt had protested, but she assured him that the only way he would be believed as a woman was if he held a man’s arm. It was bad enough Stanley was the shorter of the two, but Anna was supposedly well known for her height.
Northwick, Ashmoore, and Anna were only steps behind them, having come in Ashmoore’s carriage. Northwick had insisted she travel in his unmarked vehicle. John and Everhardt shared the meager driver’s seat and their discrepancy in size had caused the box to list to one side the entire journey. On any other day, she would have laughed.
On any other day, her father would not have come to her room, handed her a short sword and sheath to strap to her leg, and demonstrated how to run a blade into a man’s heart.
“Throw your weight behind it, Livvy. If it glances off a rib, follow it through.”
Harcourt kept glancing at her skirts as they walked.
“Anna!” She shook her head. “Stop doing that.”
“I was only wondering if you have any of those dainty treats in your reticule—those little surprises you carried last evening.”
She could honestly say, she did not. Northwick had certainly not returned them. When she shook her head, she could have sworn Harcourt looked disappointed.
“Well, Livvy darling, I have some. If you get hungry of course.”
Stanley glared up at Harcourt, then rolled his eyes.
As they walked beneath the portico, Stanley dropped behind her and Harcourt pushed ahead. All she could see was his broad back covered in a black shawl much too small for him. Glancing down, she realized an entire foot of black fabric had been added to the bottom of a rather pretty dress. She hoped, in the sea of black around them, no one else would notice.
Men stood on the stairway, directing the crowd through the main doors and away from the boxed seating.
“Ursula would have loved this.” Stanley gave her a watery grin. “She missed the stage, and the audience.”
They entered an empty row near the back, but Mrs. Malbury hurried up to them.<
br />
“Viscount Forsgreen, please. We’ve reserved seats near the front for you...and your companions of course.” She hardly looked Livvy’s way, but gave Harcourt a hard stare before she remembered herself.
They followed the Newspaper Queen to the fifth row and seats with ‘reserved’ markers draped over them, and suddenly a parade of people lined up to give Stanley a nod. Men and women alike.
Livvy leaned forward to cough, then glanced sideways to see how Harcourt was faring. Thankfully, the man was slouched in his seat with his hat brim down. One look at Stanley’s moist eyes and she remembered the man was not attending only to protect her.
She squeezed his hand and gave him a wink before settling back in her seat. He gave her skirts a nudge with his knee in answer. But then he stiffened and she realized he’d sensed the weapon beneath her crepe skirts.
“Now, Stanley. Do not get excited,” she whispered. “My father gave it to me, just in case. That is all. I am not planning anything.”
He relaxed just a bit and took a deep breath.
A coffin was carried onto the stage and the audience rose. Ursula’s last grand entrance.
A man with a dramatically curled mustache stepped to the edge of the orchestra pit and cleared his throat for attention before bidding them all to be seated. He introduced a friend of Ursula’s who gave a short, flattering account of Ursula’s life. For a moment, Livvy feared the woman might list all the gentlemen with whom Dear Ursula had fallen in love, but instead, she hinted at the woman’s determination to fight for the rights of women through her writings.
“Oh, please,” she whispered to Stanley. “The woman makes her out to be a regular Mary Shelley.”
Stanley smiled. “I believe Mary Shelley would view The Scarlet Plumiere as a welcome friend.”
Livvy rolled her eyes, but was quietly thrilled at the prospect.
Next presented was a small man who spoke more through his nose than his mouth. He claimed to be the deceased’s cousin, though many tittered when he made the claim. He read Lord Byron’s poem, And Thou Art Dead, As Young And Fair. She nearly came out of her seat when he recited,
“I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade;
The night that follow’d such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath pass’d,
And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish’d, not decay’d;”
Stanley’s hand descended and squeezed her forearm. He was practically shaking with laughter, but not at the poem; he was laughing at her.
“How dare he?” she hissed. “He would rather she died young than died ugly?”
“It was one of Urusla’s favorites. Or perhaps Lord Byron was one of her favorites. But you needn’t get your hackles up. The poem has been read at every young woman’s funeral for years.”
“Really?” The last funeral she had attended was her mother’s, and the poem had certainly not been read then.
“I beg your pardon. I forgot you have been in hiding.”
He patted her hand and moved his own away. Lucky thing, that; she would have liked to take a bite out of it. She had hardly been hiding. She’d merely chosen to remove herself from Society, that was all. Surely they did not believe her to be a coward.
Surely.
A musical number followed the nasally poet. Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 was played on the pianoforte, sans orchestra. Just as it was ending, Lady Malbury stood and made her way to the stairs, then up onto the stage. Livvy slid lower in her seat, pulled by a heavy dread in her stomach that seemed to grow with each of Lady Malbury’s steps. When she realized what the woman held in her hand, she groaned aloud.
A red feather.
The woman led the applause for the musician. Applause—at a funeral! Then she cleared her throat, twice.
“Ursula will be missed. But every time we see a scarlet feather, let us remember she fought for us. Let us remember to fight for ourselves.”
A few men booed, but eventually stopped after a mean glare from the powerful woman who could easily take up the gauntlet and expose their secrets herself.
“Ladies?” Lady Malbury backed a few steps and walked to the coffin. She laid her feather on the top and stepped to the side.
Livvy realized black dresses were lining up to her right, to take the steps to the stage. They all carried red feathers.
“Good God!” Stanley sat forward. After a moment, he turned to her and whispered. “Did you do this, Livvy?”
She could only shake her head.
Stanley looked about them with his handsome mouth agape. Livvy closed both eyes tightly, but she did not last long. She opened one.
The female mourners paraded slowly across the stage and placed their feathers on the coffin as if Ursula had been their dearest friends. Many wept. But they did not know Ursula! Most of them would rather have died than speak to the woman, but they were willing to overlook her profession because they thought she was The Scarlet Plumiere? It was not Ursula they mourned at all! It was her!
She shot to her feet. Not even Stanley’s insistent tug could have bent her knees. She wanted to run up onto the stage and set it all to rights. They had to know they weren’t alone. They still had a champion. Their champion was not lying there in a coffin! She was alive and kicking, and willing to stick around and fight for them.
But that was a lie. She was not planning to stay on and fight for them at all—she was willing to hang, and soon, to put her own monster in his grave. The Scarlet Plumiere was nothing but a selfish imposter. What these women needed was the real thing.
Or did they?
What had Lady Malbury said? Remember to fight for ourselves? Was it a call to arms? Would these women heed that call? Was it possible there was no further need for a champion?
She watched the parade, the determination on their faces after each woman placed her red feather on the pile that now scattered and swirled around the coffin. There were dozens and dozens of them now, like so many roses tossed on a grave—a tribute to what The Plumiere had done for them.
It was over.
She spun around and searched the audience. She had to find him. Had to tell him, somehow, with just a look, that it was over. She could let The Scarlet Plumiere go now. But she could not see him in the dark waves that moved through the seats, headed for the stage.
There, against the wall, stood a woman with a sack. She was handing out feathers to the women as they passed. That was her solution! He would see her tossing some metaphoric dirt on The Plumiere’s grave. He would surely understand then.
She tried to sidle past Stanley and he grabbed her.
“Let me go, Stanley. I must do this. It is not as if I am leaving the room.”
“Harc—Anna will go with you,” he murmured.
North noticed a woman a foot taller than the rest queuing up for the parade and realized it was Harcourt. A search for Stanley’s white hair confirmed the man sat alone, so he looked back at Harcourt to find Livvy. It was nearly impossible to tell them all apart in that unrelenting black sea of crepe, bombazine, and lace. If he did not see her soon—
“There,” Ashmoore murmured. “She’s with Anna.”
Finally he noticed the woman to whom Harcourt was clinging.
“What the devil are they doing?”
“I believe they are bidding farewell to The Plumiere along with every other female in the theater.”
Ashmoore could not know how his choice of words gave him hope. Could it be? Had Livvy had a change of heart? Was she willing to give up her dangerous game as he’d begged her to do in the carriage?
“Of course it might have looked suspicious,” Ashmoore whispered, “had she not shown a bit of appreciation for what The Plumiere did for her.”
Ash was correct, as usual. Livvy was only playing a role, damn her little black heart.
Livvy and Harcourt reached the stage and moved to the coffin behind a woman with a long peaco
ck’s feather bobbing above her head. Harcourt paused, allowing Livvy to go before him. It was unfathomable that he had fooled anyone at all, standing with his hands behind his back. He may as well have been standing at attention, saluting. Were they all blind?
Livvy was the opposite, of course. She was soft, rounded, elegant. She looked about at the mess of red feathers, then carefully placed her offering on the coffin. She paused for a heartbeat, then turned, looking directly to where he stood with Ash and Anna.
He heard her promise as if she had whispered it in his ear.
“Livvy,” he breathed.
She stepped to the side and waited for Harcourt. Lady Malbury strode to Livvy, took her hands, then leaned and said something. Livvy frowned and shook her head. Lady Malbury looked horrified.
Again, Livvy looked in North’s direction, but this time, she was frightened. Harcourt took her arm and they fell into the path of the other women, exiting to the left of the stage. Only when North lost sight of them did he realize he was already running down the center aisle. The flow of women re-emerged through the side doors and fanned out into the seats, so he watched for her to do the same.
Not yet. She would not have had time to reach the doors yet.
“Lord Northwick.” Gordon stepped into his path as if he had not noticed his hurry.
“Another time, Gordon.” He stepped to the side, but so did the other man.
“I was under the impression you would not be attending today.”
“Did Mister Franklin misinform you? He is in my employ, you know.”
Gordon’s eyes lit with rage, but it was quickly hidden. Good. Perhaps Mr. Franklin would receive his just desserts from the hand that fed him.
Over Gordon’s shoulder, he saw the feather of a peacock bobbing up the aisle. He looked to his left where Ashmoore stood searching the crowd. His friend looked over and shook his head.
“Pardon me, Gordon.” North feinted to the right, then to the left, then easily stepped around the bastard. “Whatever has been done to her, Gordon, will be paid back a hundred fold!”
