by Jane Ashford
“Beatrice must have told her, too,” Miss Sinclair went on. “She can’t keep a secret.”
Randolph’s breath had returned to normal. He was beginning to feel a bit amused. “They held out through the first act of the play. Until I threatened to get Hilda sent back to Herefordshire unless she told me whatever they were, very obviously, concealing.” Randolph snorted. “The things I do because of you.”
“I do not make you behave badly,” she said. “I’m not in control of your actions.”
“I ran a bit mad, seeing Rochford’s hands on you.”
She gathered her cloak closer, a gesture that exposed the long rents in its seams. Randolph glimpsed a flash of white through one of them. “I was just about to hit him again,” she said.
“Did you hit him?” Randolph was sorry to have missed that part.
“Of course I hit him! I would have gotten away on my own, too.”
“And walked home alone in the pitch-dark?”
“I thought Olivia would be with me.”
“Two young ladies stumbling through the inky streets,” Randolph replied. “Very wise.”
Miss Sinclair made a soft sound like a hiss. But apparently she had no answer for his very good point.
The hack slowed. “Here we are, sir,” called the driver.
Randolph looked out. “Where?”
“You didn’t give me no address, so I brought you back to where you hailed me,” the man replied.
They were near the theater where he’d left Georgina’s party. That wouldn’t do. “I must get you home,” he said to his companion.
“I have to do something about my clothes first. I can’t go in like this.” She plucked at her torn cloak.
“No. Dash it.”
“I wouldn’t be in this state if not for you.”
Her last sentence seemed to resound inside the carriage, the words acquiring more weight and scope with every passing moment. Randolph felt as if the air had thickened in his throat. She was very close to him in the small vehicle.
A link boy passed the hack, lighting the way for three gentlemen revelers. Torchlight washed Miss Sinclair’s face. She was gazing at him, her eyes dark pools. “What are we to do?” he murmured.
This remark also fell into the charged atmosphere like a stone tossed in a still pond. Ripples of implication resonated between them.
“What indeed?” she murmured. Her tone was odd; he couldn’t decipher it.
“Sir?” called the driver. “We going on?”
Randolph straightened. A solution was required. Where to go? An idea came to him. He leaned out and gave the man an address. The driver slapped the reins and got the horse moving again.
“Where are we going?” Miss Sinclair asked.
“To see an old friend of mine. She has a place you can make repairs.”
“She? What will she think?”
“The best of everyone, as always.”
“It’s late.” Miss Sinclair sounded uncertain.
“Quinn’s a night owl.”
“Quinn?”
“She used to teach me and my brothers, when we were very small.”
Randolph expected more questions, but none came. The hack left the lively streets around the theater and clopped into a quieter neighborhood. “It’s nearby,” he said to reassure her. “That’s why I thought of her. Are you expected back at a certain hour? I should have asked that before.” That, or done something sensible.
“No. Everyone thinks I took a headache powder and went to sleep in my room.”
“They’ll check on you though.”
“The door’s locked.”
Did she sound rather pleased with herself? He couldn’t see her face.
“Here we are then, sir,” called the cabby.
Randolph leaned out and surveyed the small cottage at the edge of the street. Light showed in the front window.
He got out and handed Miss Sinclair down, then paid off the hack. He knew from past visits that there was a tea hut nearby where drivers congregated before beginning their nightly work. He’d easily find another.
The cab departed, the horse’s hooves loud in the quiet street. Verity fingered her torn cloak as Lord Randolph knocked on a low wooden door. People would say she ought to be worried, or feel guilty about deceiving her mother, but what she felt was a wild thrill along all her nerves. A web of lies, a saber duel, a flight in the night. Verity called up every detail of the past hour—Rochford’s room scented by woodsmoke, the red of his wine, his watering eyes after she’d hit him, Lord Randolph charging in and seizing the saber, his powerful, sinuous fencing. She concentrated and fixed all of it into a stellar moment to add to her collection.
The door remained shut. “Perhaps there’s no one home?” she said.
“Quinn’s a bit slow these days.”
At last the panels opened, revealing first a candle and then a small, bent woman in a neat gray gown. White-haired and wrinkled, she looked very old.
“Quinn, you promised me you’d always ask who it is before you open the door,” he said.
The old woman chuckled. “Bless you, Lord Randolph. No one knocks here but friends.” She reached up to pat him with a gnarled hand.
The candlelight reflected off her eyes, and Verity saw that they were clouded. She must be nearly blind.
It didn’t seem to hamper her. “Who have you brought then?”
“A friend of mine.”
The old woman peered into the street. “A young lady? What are you up to?”
“Nothing, Quinn. We just need a bit of help, and then we’ll be on our way.”
He didn’t introduce them to each other. Verity realized that he didn’t want her name known in these circumstances. The idea, which probably ought to have shocked her, made her want to laugh instead.
“If it was young Sebastian, I’d have my doubts,” Quinn said. “But you were always a good boy.”
Lord Randolph made a face as if he wasn’t entirely pleased with this characterization.
“Well, come in, come in.” The old woman moved back and gestured.
The door opened directly into a small parlor, uncluttered and comfortable. A fire burned low on the hearth. Their hostess moved unerringly to a chair before it, set the candle on a little table to the side, and sat down. “I don’t sleep much these days,” she said. “I often sit up here. It’s more interesting than lying in the bed, isn’t it? I do miss reading though.” She said it without self-pity.
“Where’s Dorothy?” asked Lord Randolph.
“Away visiting her sick sister. And the fuss she made about going! You wouldn’t credit it. She’ll be back tomorrow.”
He looked relieved, and Verity wondered who Dorothy might be. Probably a companion for the old lady.
“Sit down now. Will you take a drop of cider?” Her gnarled hand fell to an earthenware crock at the side of the fireplace. She obviously knew the place of each object in her home, Verity thought.
“No, thank you, Quinn.” Lord Randolph sat on a straight chair, leaving Verity the seat opposite their hostess.
“Always a polite boy.” The old woman smiled, teasing a little. “He writes me more than all the others put together, you know,” she told Verity. “A lovely copperplate, too. I taught him that. I can still see it, even if Dorothy has to read the words to me.”
“My brothers visit,” he responded.
“So they do.” She nodded. “Such a mob of lads. Six! Why Nanny—Hannah, that is—had three nursery maids working under her and a junior cook slaving away just to feed them. And I was practically running a dame school all on my own. If two of the boys were busy, two others would be up and racing about. Little Alan…purely amazing, he was. Knew more than I did by the time he was four years old.”
Verity found the picture both endearing and da
unting.
“He lives up at Oxford, you know. Lord only knows what he does there. He tried to tell me once, but I couldn’t follow beyond a—” Quinn’s nod deepened and slowed. Her eyelids drooped. And then she was asleep in her chair.
“She does sleep,” said Lord Randolph quietly. “Like a log, actually. Just not in her bed.”
Indeed, the old woman showed no signs of stirring. “How do you know?”
“Mama keeps track of her. Quinn began to lose her sight before Alan went off to school, and so we had to find a place for her.”
Which was more than many families would do, Verity thought.
“Dorothy takes her over to Mama’s school every week. She tells stories to the littlest girls.” He stood. “Come.”
Verity followed him through a doorway at the left of the fireplace and discovered that the cottage was larger than it looked from the outside. The building stretched back from the street. They walked through a small kitchen with another hearth at the end; a wide room with beds on either side, partitioned off by thick curtains; and finally into a spacious, well-equipped sewing room. Shelves held a selection of fabrics, a rainbow of color. There was a long cutting table down one side and a daybed in the far corner. A sumptuous silk gown, half finished, was draped over a dressmaker’s dummy.
“Dorothy’s a seamstress,” said Lord Randolph. “Daughter of a Langford tenant. Very talented, I hear. Mama set her up in business with the condition that she look after Quinn. Well, they were friends already. It was no hardship. Dorothy could sew up your cloak in a trice. Only, she’d give me such a glare for bringing you here at this hour.”
He was babbling. Verity rather liked it. She took off her cloak. Her sensible, practical part noted that the old thing had torn at both shoulders, and the cloth was frayed along the seams. It would take an age to fix it. Best to stitch up her dress and carry the cloak. There was no fire in here, and the chilly air drifted through the long rip at the waist.
“I knew you’d easily find needle and thread in Dorothy’s workshop,” Lord Randolph added.
It was very quiet. And clandestine. Verity savored the word. She’d never been clandestine in her life, and she might never be again. She felt as if she’d fallen into a fairy tale. She’d come to the good witch’s cottage, and magic was imminent. She gazed at the hero of the story. That seemed to rattle him.
“So, I’ll, ah, leave you to it.” He backed toward the doorway.
“You must undo my dress,” said Verity. “I can’t reach the fastenings. And no maid to help.”
“I can’t do that.”
“It’s not difficult.” She felt curiously powerful.
“I know, but—”
“I can’t mend it while it’s on me.” She turned her back and waited.
“Verity.”
Her name on his tongue excited her. “Just hooks and laces. You know how to undo hooks and laces, don’t you?”
After a moment, she felt his fingers on her back, a light touch but it sent a jolt right through her. As when they’d kissed, he woke her body. No one else had ever done that. It demanded more caresses.
The bodice of her gown loosened and slid down a bit. She let it. She felt him undo another hook, and after a pause, another. The dress slipped off one shoulder. It was astonishing how such a feather touch could rouse her. And then it was gone. “Don’t stop,” she protested.
His reply was choked. “I’m not made of stone, Verity. I shouldn’t have brought you—”
She turned and kissed him before he could say something fatal. How she loved kissing him! The more she did it, the more she wanted to. Each time she found that there was yet another dimension to kissing, some farther place to go in the realms of physical passion. She slipped her arms under his coat and pulled him closer.
He groaned. It was a marvelous sound. She wanted to make him do it again. And she ached for his touch. Perhaps he knew that?
He pulled away. “We can’t—”
She kissed him again to stop his talking. If he kept talking, all would be lost. She wiggled her shoulders, her hips, and her dress slithered to the floor. She laughed and reached for him.
And then he was pushing her backward to the daybed, and they half fell onto it. His hands were on her, and they did seem to know precisely where to go. They roamed to just the places she wished them to be. “Oh yes,” she gasped, arching up to him.
It felt wonderful. Riveting. Desperately urgent. She pulled at his shirt until she could touch his bare skin, exploring the lovely muscles of his back. She joined him in a flurry of kisses. She tried to match his marvelous caresses. Until she had to clutch him to ride out a storm of release.
As it shook her to the depths, he claimed her lips again and entered her. She held on through a bit of discomfort and into an intimacy greater than she’d shared with any other being. She felt the urgency claim his body and carry him away, delighting in their kiss as it shook him. When he came to rest, their pulses beat heart to heart.
Randolph rose above her, disheveled, murmuring her name. He dropped quick light kisses on her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips. Verity laughed softly, letting her fingertips drift along his ribs. And then they were separate once again. He shifted so that they were lying side by side on the narrow couch.
The house remained silent. They might have been alone in the world.
Lord Randolph groaned. But it was a different sort of sound, not one Verity wished to hear. He sat up, his back to her, and put his head in his hands. The fairy tale had ended, Verity thought. The real world came rushing back. And with it came a tumult of consequences she didn’t wish to consider.
He ought to have resisted, Randolph thought. Once he’d brought Verity here—which he should not have done—he should have made Quinn assist her. But he hadn’t thought, and then a point had come when he didn’t want to. She’d been so endearingly eager. That she’d wanted him, trusted him… She’d been irresistible, and he’d given in to temptation.
There was nothing wrong with desire or physical passion, of course. In its place. But this shouldn’t have happened in a stranger’s workroom, in a tumble of clothes. He still had his boots on, for God’s sake. He’d do anything in the world rather than offer Verity Sinclair an insult. Randolph pulled at his clothes, did up buttons, and turned back to her. She was half naked and delicious, and all he could think of was doing everything all over again as soon as possible.
Well, that wasn’t an insurmountable problem. As long as he was willing to take an irrevocable step into the future. Which he found that he was. And as long as he didn’t say something stupid and muck it up.
Randolph slipped off the daybed and sank to one knee on the sewing room floor. He took Verity’s hand. This time, the words flowed. “I was swept away when we first sang together,” he said, realizing the truth of it as he spoke. “I’d never felt anything like that in my life. And since then I’ve thought of you constantly. Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”
Verity gazed into his fathomless blue eyes. As Lord…but surely they were beyond titles now? As Randolph had sat with his back turned, silent, her fairy-tale world had crumbled to dust. How, a dry inner voice had inquired, had she come out tonight to save Olivia from ruin and then tumbled straight into it herself? Gradually, she thought. Step by tantalizing step. And she’d enjoyed it thoroughly, right up to that sobering moment.
She knew that inner voice of old; it was a font of sensible, sometimes irritatingly sensible, advice. Now it added that there was a crucial difference between her case and Olivia’s—besides the fact that Olivia hadn’t stepped off the edge of propriety into uncharted waters, as she had. Randolph was no Thomas Rochford, as was manifest in his gaze.
From their first duet—that astonishing dive into harmony—she’d known the depths of him. She looked, and saw reflected in his blue eyes the soulful bond she’d felt then. They had de
ep instincts, impulses in common. She believed that. And down at the base of their kinship lay a sturdy moral code. One did the right thing. This was not a burden, but a privilege. A belief they shared. And because of all this, he hadn’t spoken like a man forced to an offer. And she didn’t feel like a victim, not the least little bit. He hadn’t said he loved her, of course. But he’d touched her as if he… Randolph was waiting. “Yes,” she said.
His breath sighed out on a word. “Splendid.” He squeezed her hand and let it go. Rising from the floor, he sat beside her. He didn’t look at her though, and Verity wondered why. “I’ll call at your lodgings tomorrow and speak to your mother,” he added. “Make it official.”
“Yes,” said Verity again. She sat up. Mama would never know that she’d been duped. Was this a poor start to a marriage?
Randolph rose. “I’ll go to see that Quinn is still sleeping.”
Everything had descended to the mundane. “I’ll sew up my dress.”
She sounded forlorn, and Randolph risked a glance. Sitting on the daybed with her underclothes in disarray, her hair in wild tendrils, she looked utterly delectable. And sad—was that right? Or was she simply thoughtful? He hated the idea that she might have regrets, but he wasn’t certain. He wanted to sweep her into his arms, but he didn’t trust himself. It was best to keep his eyes off her. He turned and went out.
Verity found a needle and thread among the sewing supplies. Conscious of the cold now, she pulled her torn cloak around her as she quickly stitched up her gown. Hooking up the back, she managed to slither into the garment, with a series of wriggles and contortions that she wouldn’t have wanted to exhibit before anyone else. The dress felt twisted and crooked when she was done, but she simply pulled the ripped cloak back over it and went in search of Randolph.
He was sitting in the front parlor. Quinn snored softly in her chair. Randolph stood. “Ready?”
Verity nodded. Her fund of conversation seemed to be exhausted.
“I’ll have to wake Quinn to bolt the door behind us,” he said. “If you stay quiet, she probably won’t even remember you were here.”
