by Fran Baker
“We are even, then, my sweet,” he said into the curls tumbling above her ear, “for you consigned my soul to hell three years ago.”
She leaned back to gaze up at him. The brilliancy of his blue eyes was dulled by the memory of pain, a pain that Francie knew well. Dropping he lashes against her cheek, she said ruefully, “But I was there beside you, Thomas. I’ve thought of you gathering comfort in the arms of Caroline Bond all these years. You can’t conceive how tortured I’ve been.”
Through the curtain of her lashes, she saw his mouth compress, his eyes harden. “Can’t I? What do you suppose I’ve felt since the moment you flung her name at me at our ball, upbraiding me without justification?”
She raised her gaze. “But you didn’t deny it.”
“I was too angry to deny it. Angry and hurt beyond measure.” Seeing incredulity pass over her face, he added with a bitter laugh, “Yes, I was hurt—deeply. It stung me to the depths that would so readily accept Agnes Dill’s word without even asking me for the truth. You were so influenced by her that I couldn’t stand the sight of her! I was jealous—jealous of a dried-up, ape-leading spinster!” He shook his head as if he could not yet believe it.
Pressing close to him, she felt his heart beat against her own. “She deserves better of you, Thomas, truly she does.”
“Perhaps,” he said grudgingly, then went on in a rough voice. “When you refused to hear my apologies, my explanations, I hated her for it. I knew her influence led you to choose the school over me. Then you went off to Norfolk with her.”
His voice ended sharply, and Francie felt his pain as if it were her own. “Forgive me,” she whispered into his shoulder. “Forgive me if you can.”
She felt a burning as his lips trailed down her neck to the lace at her collar. She trembled as he moaned and his warm breath seeped beneath the lace. “If—if you will tell me now, my darling,” she sighed even as a quiver of pleasure shook her, “I will know you truly forgive me.”
For a moment she thought he would not speak, for his lips continued a slow pattern up the hollow of her neck and his hands delicately defined the outline of her bosom. Then his muscles tensed. Bending her head back, she looked into his hot gaze and an answering passion flared into her.
He gave a small shake as if to wake himself, then set her away from him. “I trust I shall not have to continue fighting my need for you much longer, my love.”
His words confused her. She turned to face the fire and played nervously with the burnished ends of her hair. “But—but what are you saying?”
“My God, Francie!” He did not come closer, and she refused to look at him. “I mean that I am tired of having to act the gentleman around you. Tired of having to hide my feelings for you. I want to do what we should have done three years ago. For God’s sake, Francie, I want to marry you!”
She half-turned. Fire shadows dueled with firelight over the lines of her face, concealing her expression in their conflict. The bodice of her dress moved in rapid agitation. “But what about Mary?” she asked in a voice that carefully concealed her emotion.
“You can’t seriously believe I ever meant to marry Mary.”
At that, Francie faced him on a whirl. “Of course you meant to! That is—didn’t you?”
He moved a step closer, and she saw amusement glittering in his eyes. “Lord, no! You, my charming she-devil, are the only woman I’ve ever cared to wed.”
“But—but—what were you up to then?” she demanding, unwillingly sounding delighted.
“As soon as I heard that your father had gone aground, I bolted like a hare to ask for Mary. It occurred to me, you see, that the last thing you’d want was to have me for a brother-in-law.” His smile teased her. “When you raced to Town to voice your opposition, I thought I’d found a way to get you back into my life at last.” The smile twisted into self-mockery. “but I discovered you to be more of a devil’s daughter than I’d counted on. You seemed to hate me more than ever, and I was torn between wanting to punish you and wanting to—”
“But if you didn’t plan to marry Mary,” Francie interrupted, shying from the desire within his dark gaze, “then what did you intend for tomorrow night?”
His smile vanished altogether. His brows descended heavily. “I don’t know. I was getting to the point where to have you as a sister was better than not having you at all. Several times I nearly threw away all my pride to beg you to listen . . . but each time that I lost control, you, my darling termagant, lost your temper. I feared you’d pack up and go back to that damned school. So I forced myself to hide my need, to pretend I wasn’t shriveling up inside. When apology didn’t work, I tried bribery.”
Her brows rose. A hint of a laugh escaped him.
“Oh, yes,” he confessed. “Your father’s debts. I’d have paid considerably more than twenty thousand pounds to obligate you to me. I even thought of kidnapping you—though I had to drink the courage to contemplate it.”
“The day I was leaving,” Francie remembered, and saw the affirmation in his twinge of embarrassment. “And you were so rude to Agnes because she spoiled your plans.”
With wonder, Francie studied Thomas as if seeing him for the first time—the wavy black hair, the heavy brows standing in straight lines over his blinding blue eyes, the passionate mold of his lips. How could she have ever thought him arrogant or selfish? Though harsh, proud and strong, his face clearly bespoke his charm, his gentle kindness, his love.
“I’ve been the greatest beast!” she exclaimed, on the verge of tears now. “I’ve been cruel and cold and mean and m-miserable! You can’t p-possibly still wish to m-marry me.”
She was enfolded in his embrace once more, his arms offering more than warmth and comfort. “I’ve no doubt you’ll make me a very bad wife, Francie, my love.” He stifled her injured protest with a resounding kiss, breaking away to add softly at the edge of her lips. “But you’re the only wife I’ll ever want.”
“I’ll be forever losing my temper,” she said, feeling she owed him a warning.
“I have always thought you magnificently lovely when angry, my firebrand,” he assured her.
She chanced a glance up at him and felt an unexpected surge of desire at the darkness within his lustrous eyes. He captured one copper ringlet and wound it around his finger, then leaned down to kiss the strand.
“Mmm, you smell of honeysuckle and springtime, Francie.”
“I rather think I smell of dust,” she returned in a blithe attempt to cover the power an d depth of her tumultuous feelings. Her joy was such that it frightened her to admit it, as if to acknowledge her happiness would make it instantly vanish.
“That, too,” he agreed easily. Slowly, he drew her toward the bench, and she found herself sitting within the circle of his arms, sighing contentedly while he catalogued her charms from head to toe. “Though when we are wed, my love,” he finished in dulcet tones, “I shall endeavor to fatten you up. I’ll not let you slip through my fingers again.”
A tiny prick of pain punctuated her cloud of happiness. Studiously examining the oversized brass buttons of his coat, she said tentatively, “Could you tell me now, Thomas, just what happened . . . before? I cannot think Agnes would tell a deliberate lie.”
His thumb and finger tipped her chin up. Her heart missed several beats as his eyes probed hers. “She did not lie. I met with Caroline that day.” His hand refused to allow her to look away. “But I did so only to sever the last of what had been a moribund relationship from the moment I first saw you, Francie. You must believe that. Caroline had already gone to the protection of another—”
“The Marquess of Armourdale,” she supplied on a bare breath.
“Yes. But I owed Caroline much. She had been more giving than I in our relationship, and it would have been callous of me not to leave her some provision. I met her to give her the deed to a house in Town.” He shrugged. “I’ve thought countless times that I should have sent my solicitor or my secretary or some other damn
fool to give it to—”
“No!” Francie sat upright. “You did the most honorable and just thing. It is I who was the fool. And if you never forgive me, it would only serve me right!”
“Oh, my dear, dear, foolish Francie.” He laughed, pulling her back into his embrace. “I love you.”
Chapter 16
The wind had at last succeeded in chasing the clouds away, leaving the baronet’s curricle in a bath of golden light upon the graveled courtyard. Francie eyed the vehicle with distaste and could not suppress a long-drawn sigh as Sir Thomas lifted her up onto the seat.
“Are you too tired to make the journey, Francie? Shall we stay here the night and go on tomorrow?”
Moonbeams played tag over his upturned features. Looking down, Francie shook her head and saw the faintest frown pursue the streaks of light over his face. Then he turned came round the curricle to climb in beside her. Before they set off, he tenderly placed a heavy lap robe over her legs and severely instructed her to keep her hands beneath its warmth.
“Yes, sir,” she said most meekly.
He shot her a suspicious look, and she grinned in return. Laughing harmoniously, they left Welwyn behind. Happiness surged up within Francie until she felt she must release it or burst. Another deep sigh, this of contentment, rent the air.
“If you are weary, my dear, do not hesitate to lean upon me,” said Sir Thomas, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead of them.
“I am, rather,” she confessed. Peeping up at him from around the edge of her bonnet, she inspected the lines of his face with a new shyness. “When this is over, I trust I shall never set foot in a curricle again. This afternoon’s misadventures were quite enough alone without suffering the whole of the night in one as well.”
“This afternoon?”
“Yes, I was out with Lord Coombs,” she began, then paused as she remembered why she had been with his lordship. “Well, um, well, we met with an accident and his wheel broke from his curricle and it was quite dreadful,” she finished in a rush.
She took another peek around her bonnet and found to her dismay that a new severity had erased all the gentle lines from his face.
“I thought you were not encouraging the viscount,” Sir Thomas said in a terse voice.
“I wasn’t!” she immediately disclaimed.
He threw her a disbelieving look before returning his gaze to the view beyond his team’s head.
“Truly, Thomas! If—if you must know, his lordship was helping me . . . helping me to procure twenty thousand pounds.
This time the look he fastened on her was one of amazement, but she was relieved to note that the cold rigidity had yielded to a more relaxed warmth. She immediately pressed her advantage. “You see, Thomas—and I trust you will try to understand and not fly up into the boughs at me, for if you will remember we were not on such good terms at that time—I meant to pay back the sum you settled on Papa and thus release Mary from her obligation to marry you.”
She closed her eyes and held her breath, waiting for his explosion of scorn, his utter disgust of her. Her eyes flew open with the first crack of laughter and widened as he exclaimed, “You she-devil! The jealousies you put me through! I got the fright of my life the day I saw you and Coombs exchanging what I thought were vows of love. How I wanted to murder him! Both of you! And now I find you were using him to settle your indebtedness to me. Just as you used Harvey to free Mary.”
His hand jerked slightly as he laughed, jolting the reins and sending the horses a series of confusing signals. Francie waited until he had steadied the team before responding, and then she did so coolly.
“I did not use Lord Coombs. At least,” she conceded, “not at first. We failed to procure the funds, and in any case, I do not see what you find so amusing.”
“Don’t you, my sweet?”
The clouds capriciously hid the moon and, as he returned his attention to keeping on the shadowed road, Francie did not prolong the argument. Little by little her body sagged more closely against the comforting support of his. She did not know when she dozed, or for how long, but at some point she ceased to be conscious of anything beyond her own contentment.
Something jarred her shoulder, her head lolled, and Francie suddenly became aware of bright lights and the buzz of voices around her. Raising her head from Sir Thomas’s caped shoulder, she saw before her sleep-fuzzed eyes the lamplit windows of a large, low building. Gradually, she focused on the activity in the midst of a cobbled courtyard—a grouping of ostlers and postboys around a well-weathered chaise.
“Awake, my darling?” whispered a tender voice.
Blushing with an inexplicable shyness, Francie nodded to the baronet. “Where are we?”
“Hungtingdon—and, with any luck at all at the end of our chase.”
“What?” Francie sat upright, suddenly awake.
“Unless what we hear about the overcrowding of the King’s highways is more true than I’d previously believed, there aren’t many hired coaches drawn by a single pair on the road at this time of night,” Sir Thomas explained, cocking his head toward the chaise in the yard.
As his groom ran to old the team’s leaders, Sir Thomas jumped down, then to help Francie to the ground. This time as he lifted her down, his hands drifted slightly upward from her waist and lingered. His lips were but a whisper away from hers and her pulse throbbed violently. She forgot where they were, what they were doing there. Francie experienced a shuddering disappointment when, after bare seconds, he turned and led her through the doorway of the inn.
They stood in a wide, well-lit hallway with doors to either side of them and a staircase at the far end. A tall, stocky man with close-set eyes and the battered face of a pugilist materialized from a door beneath the stairs. Sir Thomas was about to address him when voices sailed out to the passageway.
“But we must go on,” someone said in soggy tones.
“I cannot think it right,” objected another, deeper voice. “We should turn back, my dear, you know we should.”
“But I don’t care about shoulds!” wailed the owner of the first voice.
Francie and Sir Thomas looked at one another with triumph in their eyes, then turned as one toward the door to their right.
“Hold on! Where d’ye think ye’re off to? That’s a private room, already hired,” protested the besmocked man from his stand by the stairs.
They did not so much as glance at him, but pushed wide the slightly ajar door to behold Mary Hampton sitting mournfully on a gilded wooden armchair with claw legs and bright red velvet upholstery which clashed with the deep pink of her round gown. Frederick Harvey stood before her, one arm stretched out, his short brown hair uncommonly disheveled. Both turned guiltily as the door swung open. A full view of puffed, reddened eyes and stained, full cheeks proclaimed Mary’s distress while a tensed jaw evidenced Frederick’s battle to maintain his usual self-control.
“We are undone!” Mary cried, and buried her head in her hands, bursting into fresh weeping.
Francie’s aching fatigue vanished. She dashed to Mary’s side and threw her arms about the young woman’s trembling form.
“Mary, dearest! Of course you are not undone. Sir Thomas and I are come to—”
“Oh, I know, I know,” Mary bemoaned in a voice muffled by wrenching sobs. “You are come to return us to London and ruin our lives.” In one bound she thrust Francie’s arms from her and pitched herself against the astounded Mr. Harvey. “D-don’t let them do this to us, Frederick! T-tell them to b-be off!”
Mr. Harvey stared for a moment at the trembling pink and milk-white form crushing the knot of his cravat, then rose manfully to the occasion. “No one shall ruin your life, sweet Mary. I promise you that. No one,” he repeated, glowering darkly at Sir Thomas over the top of Mary’s hair.
The implied threat in his scowl passed wide of its mark, for the baronet merely tipped his head and said mildly, “Quite right, Mr. Harvey. No one shall ruin Miss Mary’s life—or yours.”
The tangle of brown curls lifted slightly and a pair of shimmering blue eyes blinked at Sir Thomas. “Do you mean you will not force us back to London?”
“I, my dear, would not think of forcing you to do anything,” Sir Thomas replied kindly.
“But you do see, don’t you, dearest, that you must return to London?” put in Francie, with a puzzled glance at the baronet.
“No,” mumbled her sister into Mr. Harvey’s dampened shoulder. “I don’t. I won’t.”
“I have been trying, Miss Hampton, to convince her of the . . . the impropriety and the unreasonableness of our actions,” said the haggard Mr. Harvey, all the while continuing to embrace Miss Mary with a great deal of protective fervor. “I do not know how I came to agree to make this mad journey, but I assure you nothing untoward has occurred between us. After our return to London, I shall, of course, not importune upon Miss Mary’s father.”
This noble speech had the effect of sending Miss Mary’s arms tightly about his neck, while the room reverberated with her fresh wails. At that moment the landlord shoved his way into the room and stood surveying them with arms akimbo.
“Here now! What’s amiss? Such racket and goings-on at this time o’night!” He fixed narrowed eyes on Sir Thomas with the look of a cock facing an opponent in a pit.
Quelling the man with one raised brow, Sir Thomas remarked easily, “Don’t be a fool, Harvey. Not to importune upon one’s own wife would be beyond belief.”
All weeping ceased s if snapped in two.
“W-wife?” said Mary, venturing once more to peek over Frederick’s shoulder.
One of the baronet’s most dazzling off-center smiles crossed his face. “Wife,” he repeated the instant before he turned his attention to the landlord. “Please instruct the ostlers to put your fastest, freshest team of four to the chaise outside and make ready for our immediate departure.”
