by Jane Feather
Suddenly there were men all around him, emerging from passageways so narrow, they were barely wide enough for a man's shoulders, moving out of shadowed doorways, all bearing staves and knives.
It was, Nathaniel thought, about the ugliest mob he'd ever encountered, and he was its sole target.
His pistol was in one hand while the other loosened the cane he carried attached to his saddle; his eyes never left the gathering rabble. He pressed a catch in the handle of the cane, and a wicked blade sprang forth. Another stone flew, catching him full in the chest, almost winding him.
He fired his pistol straight into the line of men in front of him. A man went down with a scream, and for a second the line faltered. He put spur to his horse and charged through them, bending low over the saddle as he slashed with his sword. For a moment he thought he was through, and then his horse caught a hoof on an uneven cobble and as the animal struggled to regain his balance, a knife plunged into his neck, severing the carotid artery. Blood leaped in a pulsing fountain as the horse died instantly. Nathaniel flung himself sideways off the saddle before the animal rolled on him, and spun on the balls of his feet, his sword slicing through the mosaic of grim faces bearing down upon him. On his feet and with no time to reload his pistol, he hadn't a chance against such a number.
It seemed ironical that after a career of circumventing danger and treachery for the highest stakes he should meet his death in a squalid alley in a reeking port in Eastern Prussia at the hands of a starving mob.
And then he heard the sound of a pistol shot and a wild cry of fury. A horse plunged through the mob, rearing, caracoling, hooves flailing, forcing men to fall back or be trampled. There was a moment when he saw clearly through the bodies surrounding him to the glitter of water at the end of the alley. He flung himself toward the gap before it closed, and Gabrielle leaned low over her saddle, holding out her hand. He grabbed it and sprang upward with the same acrobatic agility he'd shown when he'd leaped into the rafters in the attic in Paris.
And then they were out in the sunlight of the quay and the milling horde was left behind with a dead horse, leather harness, and Nathaniel's portmanteau as prize.
Gabrielle rode her horse straight onto the flat-bottomed ferry waiting at the quayside. The Danish master of the good ship Kattegat was already on the ferry, supervising the loading of supplies. He glanced at the horse and its two riders and then came over to Gabrielle.
"Two horses, you said."
"Yes, but now there's only one."
"Same price," he declared, squinting ferociously.
" D'accord,"she replied with an impatient shrug, swinging off her mount. "I'll tether him to the rail."
Nathaniel said nothing. What he had to say couldn't be said on an open deck. Gabrielle had simply followed her own impulses as she always did, and he wondered vaguely why he hadn't expected this. She'd accepted his refusal in Tilsit with too much docility, and he should have been warned. Then he noticed that blood was dripping from her arm, leaving a sticky trail across the bottom of the ferry. Presumably, as she'd plunged into the fray, one of his assailant's knives had nicked her arm.
He pulled off his cravat. "You're bleeding all over the place. Let me bind it for the moment and I'll look at it properly when we get where we're going." He fastened the cravat tightly around the gash. "Just where are we going?"
"Copenhagen," she said with a weary sigh. "That vessel in the middle of the bay… the Kattegat."
Nathaniel sank down on the bottom of the ferry, propping his back against the rail, and lifted his face to the sun. A slight breeze offered some relief from the scorching heat and carried away some of the noxious stench of Silute. Gabrielle tethered her horse and came and sat down beside him.
She wasn't fool enough to believe that Nathaniel's present silence meant that he had nothing to say. The storm would break when he was good and ready, so she kept her own counsel until then.
Rowers pulled the ferry across the short stretch of water to the Kattegat. Gabrielle followed the master up a swinging rope ladder, Nathaniel on her heels.
"We'll manage the horse," the master said. "There's a cabin to starboard for you two… uh-" His straight eye rested on Gabrielle in open speculation, running down her figure. Her cloak was thrown back from her shoulders, and the britches and shirt offered little concealment to the rich curves of her tall body. "Gentlemen…" he added with something suspiciously like a leer.
Gabrielle kept her expression haughtily impassive, and Nathaniel stared out to sea, apparently stone deaf.
The master shrugged. "Not that it's any of my business. You pay your passage and I ask no questions." He held out his hand. "Forty livres, I believe was agreed upon."
Nathaniel's breath whistled through his teeth, but Gabrielle calmly withdrew the pouch from inside her shirt and shook out the required sum into the master's open hand. "I believe you'll find that to be correct. Be careful with my horse."
The master solemnly counted the coins, then turned and shouted orders to his seamen. Within half an hour Gabrielle's terrified horse had been hoisted aboard in a canvas sling and securely tethered in the stern of the boat.
Only then did Nathaniel speak. "Come below." It was a sharp command.
Gabrielle followed him down the companionway and into a small, sparsely furnished but clean cabin with a small porthole and two bunks set into the bulwark.
Nathaniel closed the door with a controlled slam and stood with his shoulders against it, regarding Gabrielle in fulminating silence. "Dear God," he exclaimed at last, "you ought to be beaten, Gabrielle!"
"Well, that's a fine thing to say, when I've just saved your skin," she retorted. "And for the second time too."
"I wonder why it is that my skin needs saving only when you're around," he declared dourly.
"Oh, that is so unjust," she protested. "It has nothing to do with me, and you know it."
He did, but was not yet ready to admit to anything. "I forbade you absolutely to come with me."
"Did you?" She glanced around the cabin with an air of interest. "Which bunk do you want?"
He ignored this. "Just what story did you spin to explain leaving your godfather?"
"The truth," she said, smiling blandly.
"What!"
"My godfather has infinite tolerance for the weaknesses of the flesh," she told him in perfect truth. "I told him I wished to pursue a liaison with Benedict Lubienski. I told him we were intending to spend some private time in Danzig, and I would decide where I would go next when we had satisfied each other."
Nathaniel stared at her. It was so damnably reasonable. She was no ingenue. She was a widow who'd had lovers in the past. Talleyrand was a man of the world. Napoleon had his Marie Walewska. Josephine wrote to him daily with endless protestations of jealousy. Talleyrand had innumerable liaisons. There was absolutely no reason why such a story shouldn't be believed… particularly when it bore the mark of truth.
"So I rode out ahead of you," she continued into his stupefied silence. "And arranged passage to Copenhagen on this ship. And then I assume we'll be able to get passage on an English commercial vessel to London, don't you think?"
She had simply put his own plan into operation. Simply and most efficiently.
"Come here and let me take a proper look at that gash on your arm," he said.
"Oh, it's all right… it's just a flesh wound," she responded cheerfully, recognizing his tacit acceptance and agreement in this oblique change of subject and perfectly prepared to settle for just that.
"I said come here!" Nathaniel bellowed, his temper finally loosened from the reins.
Gabrielle crossed the small space in two hasty steps. "There's no need to shout at me like that."
"I don't seem to have any other way of expressing my frustration," he gritted, unwrapping the cravat from her arm.
"I love you," Gabrielle said calmly. "And I've made my choice, and I'm afraid you're stuck with me. I'm quite happy to wait while you become accustomed t
o the idea, but I'm afraid you'll have to get used to it in my company. Because where you go, I go."
Nathaniel observed judiciously, “This may be a flesh wound, but it needs washing."
"Does it?" she responded, regarding him with her head on one side. "Have you become accustomed to the idea yet?"
Nathaniel dropped her arm and took her head between his hands, his fingers twisting in her hair. "Yes," he said savagely. "I know when I'm defeated. I accept the fact that I'm stuck with you. We'll see if that Danish robber on deck has the authority to perform a marriage service."
"Is that a proposal, sir?"
"No, it's not a proposal. It's a damn statement. It's past time I took the initiative around here."
"Oh, well, be my guest," Gabrielle said. "Imust say I'm getting a little tired of making all the decisions."
His fingers tightened in her hair, holding her head in a viselike grip. His eyes burned with a passionate intensity. "You are sure, Gabrielle? Sure you love me… sure you embrace all Istand for? Sure you're willing to trust me with your love?"
"Yes," she affirmed. "I'm certain of all those things. Are you also certain?"
Nathaniel nodded. "I'm still terrified, but Iknow that Ilove you and Iwill do everything Ican to make you happy."
He brought his mouth to hers, and Gabrielle thought, the instant before she was lost in the hard assertion of his kiss, that it was only the smallest white lie, the most technical of deceptions on which their future rested.
Chapter 25
An ant was crawling up the hack of Mr. Jeffrys's rusty black gown. In a minute it would reach his shoulder and then crawl onto his neck. He had a scrawny neck, like a chicken's, and it was dirty too. His white collar always had a dark ring around it.
Jake dreamily watched the ant's progress, wondering what the schoolmaster would do when it touched his skin. Perhaps he wouldn't notice and it would crawl down inside his shirt and bite him.
Jake grinned to himself, hugging this pleasurable thought. Perhaps it was a poisonous ant and the bite would swell up and Mr. Jeffrys would have a fever and have to go to bed. Perhaps it would be so bad, he'd decide to leave Burley Manor and go back where he came from.
A fly buzzed against the windowpane, and Mr. Jeffrys's chalk squeaked on the blackboard. Jake frowned at the long series of numbers appearing beneath the chalk. In a minute Mr. Jeffrys would tell him to come up and work the sum out for himself and he wouldn't be able to do it because he didn't understand long division. He thought he might have been able to understand it if the schoolmaster didn't drone on and on in that horrible thin, flat voice.
It was warm in the schoolroom. Mr. Jeffrys had a loathing of fresh air-he said it was bad fot his chest or something. Papa and Gabby loved to be outside. Papa had been away for a long time now. Jake wondered where Gabby was. Papa had said she had to stay in Paris and it wasn't anything to do with Jake that she couldn't come back with them. But Jake sometimes thought Papa had been fibbing…
Tears pricked behind his eyes and he blinked them away rapidly. He always felt like crying when he thought of Gabby. She was so warm and she was always laughing and she had such lovely clothes and she smelled of roses…
"Ow!" He sat up with a cry of pain, rubbing his knuckles. Mr. Jeffrys stood glaring at him, tapping his swishy stick on the edge of the desk.
"Master Praed, perhaps you would favor me with your attention," the schoolmaster said with one of his nasty yellow smiles that wasn't a smile at all. He gestured to the blackboard with his stick. "Perhaps you would do me the great honor of completing the sum I've begun."
Wiping his eyes with the back of his smarting hand, Jake went reluctantly to the board and picked up the chalk. The figures meant nothing to him, and he stared at them blankly.
"Dear me," murmured Mr. Jefffys, coming up behind him. He was standing so close, Jake could feel his breath stirring his hair and he could smell that sourmilk smell that seemed to hang around him. "We haven't been listening to a word I've said the entire afternoon, have we, Master Praed?"
Jake wrinkled his nose, trying not to breathe in too deeply. His stomach knotted with tension as he waited for the inevitable tirade. The words were not so much angry as hurtful, like little darts that buried themselves in his skin. It made him feel sick, and he stared at the white chalk figures, holding himself very still.
The sound of carriage wheels on the gravel below carried faintly through the sealed window. Mr. Jeffrys paused in full sarcastic flood and walked to the window.
"It seems his lordship has arrived," he observed, tapping the stick in the palm of his hand. "I'm sure he'll be very grieved to hear of your lack-" He stopped in astonishment as Jake abandoned his chastened position at the blackboard and ran to the window. He jumped on tiptoe to look out.
"Gabby! It's Gabby!" Before the outraged tutor could say or do anything, he'd bolted from the room, his feet resounding on the stairs as he hurled himself down them.
Mr. Jeffrys gathered his gown around him and marched downstairs in the wake of his errant pupil.
"Gabby… Gabby… Gabby…" Jake catapulted into Mrs. Bailey as he flew across the hall. Bartram had the front door open and jumped aside as the child shoved past him, almost tumbling down the steps to the gravel sweep.
Gabby had just alighted from the chaise and was leaning in to reach for something. His father stood behind her. There was another chaise standing on the gravel, but Jake didn't take this in at first in his joy.
"Gabby!" he bellowed again.
She spun around. "Jake!" Her arms went around him as he leaped against her, and she lifted him off the ground. "My, you have grown," she said, kissing his cheek. "I can hardly lift you now."
"That's 'cause I'm seven," the child gabbled. "Where've you been? Have you cone back to stay?"
"I realize I run a poor second after Gabrielle," Nathaniel said, sounding amused, "but how about a greeting for your father."
Laughing, Gabrielle set Jake on his feet. There was the barest hesitation in the boy's manner as he looked up at his father, but when Nathaniel smiled and bent to pick him up, he put his arms tightly around his neck and hugged him with a silent wealth of emotion that filled Nathaniel with a warm, deep joy.
"Lord Praed, Ireally do apologize." Mr. Jeffrys's accents, both obsequious and outraged, broke into the reunion. "Jake had no right to leave the schoolroom in such a discourteous and impetuous fashion. I will deal with him at once. Come here, young man." He moved purposefully, obviously prepared to wrest his pupil from Nathaniel's arms.
"Are you still around, Mr. Jeffrys?" Gabrielle turned to look at him, her lip curled in disdain. "You really are the most odious toad. I suggest you pack your bags and leave as soon as you can do so. Lord Praed will give you a month's wages in lieu of notice and the gig will drive you into Winchester, where you can catch the stage to take you back from whence you came."
She brushed her hands together with an air of great satisfaction.
Mr. Jeffrys's mouth opened and shut, and he looked just like the big old carp in the fish pond, Jake thought delightedly, unable to believe what he'd just heard.
"My lord?" Jeffrys turned in appeal to Nathaniel. "I don't know what to say-"
"We'll discuss it later, Jeffrys," Nathaniel said calmly, setting Jake on his feet. "You may be sure there'll be a generous settlement."
The tutor clutched the lapels of his gown in a convulsive grip as if trying to hang on to some symbol of his authority, then he turned and went back into the house.
Jake gave a gleeful shriek. "You sent him away, Gabby! Gabby sent old Jeffrys away!"
Gabrielle grinned down at him. "Mothers can be remarkably useful on occasion."
Jake blinked and then said in an awestruck voice, "You going to be my mother?"
"Would you like that?" She came down to his level, catching his chin in her hand.
Jake just gazed at her, speechless. Then he gave a loud whoop of joy and dashed away, racing round and around the gravel sweep, his
arms flapping wildly in a violent imitation of a massive bird.
Georgie, who'd just alighted from the second chaise, regarded Jake's exuberance with a tolerant eye. "He seems to like the idea," she observed.
"Did you just give that tutor his walking papers, Gabby?" Simon was looking half shocked, half amused.
"Odious toad, she called him," Miles said with a grin. "Mind you, he did seem to be singularly lacking in attraction, even for a tutor."
"I suppose it was too much to expect you to wait for the ink to dry on the marriage license before you started throwing your weight around," Nathaniel remarked with a degree of resignation.
"When it comes to Jeffrys, yes," she responded firmly.
Nathaniel shook his head with a half-smile and called to his son, still tearing around the circle loudly whooping.
"Jake! Jake, come here now and greet our guests in proper fashion."
Jake turned and came swooping toward them, flapping his wings. His father reached out and collared him, hauling him to a standstill.
"You remember Lord and Lady Vanbrugh, don't you?"
Jake nodded, too out of breath to speak. His face was scarlet with his exertions and his hair stuck damply to his forehead.
"Make your bow," Nathaniel prompted.
Panting, Jake obeyed, jerkily sticking out his damp hand. Taking a gasping breath, he asked Gabrielle, "Are you married to Papa now?"
"Almost," she said, wiping his face with her handkerchief. "That's why Georgie and Simon and Miles are here. We're going to be married in the church tomorrow."
"Can I watch?"
"Of course. That's why we came here," she said, taking his hand. "Shall we go and tell Primmy that Mr. Jeffrys is going?"
Miles watched them walk off hand in hand, Jake's bubbling voice continuing almost without pause for breath. "It's funny, but I'd never have thought of Gabby as a mother," he said. "She seems too exotic, somehow."
"Oh, that's nonsense," Georgie declared. "Gabby's wonderful with children. You should see her with my baby brothers and sisters. And little Ned dotes on her."
