Improper Arrangements (The Improper Series)

by Juliana Ross

  “The bastard.”

  “I suspect Papa would agree with you. At any rate, he ran him off by threatening to tell my brothers—they’re extremely protective, all three of them. And hot-tempered.”

  “So after that you decided...?”

  “No. I was still young enough, and silly enough, to believe I might still marry well. It was only a few months into the Season, so I was taken back to London—they explained my absence with a vague story regarding an ailing relative—and my mother set about finding me a husband. It didn’t take long.”

  “You were married?” he asked, his face contorted with—concern? Disgust?

  “No, never. I should have said that they found me a suitable fiancé. Lord Alfred Wraxhall.”

  “Leo Wraxhall? I know him. I mean, I knew him once. We were friends in our younger days.”

  “I hardly knew him at all. But he seemed to like me well enough, and after all the fuss I’d already caused I didn’t have the heart to object to an engagement.”

  “What happened?”

  “Our parents planned for the engagement to be announced at the Duchess of Sutherland’s ball. But Lord Alfred never appeared. Late that evening, after I’d stood there waiting for hours, we discovered he had cried off. He was in love with someone else, you see, and eloped with her not long after.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  “Not in the slightest. But the scandal and humiliation...”

  “What was so scandalous? Engagements are broken every day.”

  “Unfortunately, Lord Alfred had a less than lily-white reputation. It was rumored, afterward, that he’d corrupted me before running off with his cousin’s wife. Of course it was ridiculous—we’d never once been alone together, not even for a minute—but the damage was done. Friends cast me aside. Invitations were withdrawn. That sort of thing.”

  With that the memories came flooding back—remorse, shame, embarrassment so acute it could still turn my stomach nearly a decade later. What a fool I had been. What a naïve, stupid, gullible fool.

  “Makes me all the happier I left England years ago,” Elijah said gruffly.

  “I suffered through it for months before I realized that the only person who could make me happy was me. No one else. So I went to my parents and told them I no longer wished to marry, but would live my life independently, on my own terms. I alone would control my future. And I would do it with or without their blessing, though of course I very much wished to remain in accord with them.”

  “Your father actually agreed to this?”

  “In that respect I was very fortunate, particularly since I was only eighteen. He could have just as easily had me locked away. But he and Mama had seen what I had endured, so they let me have my way. Since then I’ve lived in my own house, taken charge of my own monies, managed my life as I see fit.”

  “What did they think of your walking the High-Level Route?”

  “They weren’t happy about my going. But Tom explained he would help me find a suitable guide, and all was well. They insisted I bring my maid and a footman with me, but I left them at my cousin’s in Paris.”

  “Is that where you’ll return once we reach Arolla?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’ll go on to Zermatt first. I should like to see the Matterhorn at closer quarters.”

  “Excellent idea. But first we need to sleep. Lie down, where you were before, while I douse the lantern.”

  He stretched out behind me, just as he’d done before while I slept, and I cuddled gratefully against him, soaking in the heat of his body and the strength of his encircling arms. He must have been terribly tired, for he was asleep within seconds, leaving me alone in the dark with my thoughts.

  I didn’t regret having revealed so much to him, but I wasn’t at ease with the notion, either. What did it serve by telling him the truth? I could have chosen to gloss over the subject with a laugh, could have said I’d always been so disposed and had always kept my counsel.

  It would have been a lie, of course. Until the twin disappointments of Jean-Philippe and Lord Alfred, I had been a perfectly conventional girl. I had expected to live an entirely conventional life. I’d had no ambitions beyond marrying well and becoming a mother.

  When I’d begun to respond to Jean-Philippe’s flirtation, I’d known full well my parents would never allow him to court me. But I’d been bored, and curious, and he had been terribly charming, and so I allowed him to persuade me to do things I didn’t precisely want to do. I allowed him to trample my conscience.

  When my parents rushed me toward a patched-up alliance with Lord Alfred, I stopped my ears to the consequences of marrying a man so unknown to me. I ignored my very real misgivings, allowed the arrangements to be made—and, once again, I suffered for it.

  It could have been so much worse. I could have become pregnant with Jean-Philippe’s child. I could have been forced to marry him. Or, just as disastrously, I could have married Lord Alfred. As both men had been entirely indifferent to me, a lifetime of misery would have been certain.

  When I withdrew from society, almost a decade ago, people assumed I’d given up. Resigned myself to spinsterhood when I was still a green girl of eighteen. But I hadn’t given up. I had simply decided not to compromise.

  Holding fast to my principles wasn’t at all difficult, for the men I met were singularly uninspiring—certainly not the stuff of which romantic dreams were fashioned. Nor was I the object of much attention, despite my wealth, for I was far too independent-minded for most men’s comfort.

  Certain that I had taken the correct path in life, I was content with my lot. I had my home, my art, my family and my friends. What more did I need?

  Then Elijah walked out of the forest, caught me when I fell and set about exploding every last one of my hard-fought certainties. As for my contentment, he had reduced it to ashes.

  How could I ever be content in the presence of such a fascinating and complicated man? I desired him beyond reason, but the depths of that desire frightened me. What if it led me to think I were in love with him? How would I recover from that?

  It was fortunate that Elijah had no intention of falling in love with me. “I can make you no promises, can offer you nothing,” he had said. And though he treated me with great fondness and seemed to hold me in genuine esteem, he had intimated no finer feelings. Had not spoken of love or everlasting ardor or indeed of our having any future together past the moment we arrived in Arolla.

  It was for the best that we part. He knew it, as did I.

  Now if only I could convince my heart.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I woke at dawn, chilled through and stiff from a restless night’s sleep on hard ground. Emerging from our shelter, I found Elijah standing some distance away, his eyes fixed on the path ahead.

  “Good morning,” I called to him.

  “Good morning. I’m sorry there’s no coffee. I’d have made a fire were there anything to burn.” He gestured to the barren, rock-strewn plain on which we stood.

  “I don’t mind. Is there anything to eat?”

  “Yes. Some saucisson and bread.”

  We ate our meager breakfast where we stood, as there was no comfortable place to sit apart from the interior of the shelter. Examining it in the light of day, it seemed to me little short of miraculous that he’d been able to construct such a cozy and watertight place for us to pass the night. He’d begun with the boulder I’d rested against, as high as my shoulder, with one tolerably flat side; it had become the back wall of the bivouac. He’d lashed one side of an oilcloth groundsheet to the great rock and cleared the rubble from the adjoining ground, using the loose scree he’d scraped away to peg down the edges of the tent. Inside, a second, smaller groundsheet had been our floor, its perimeter folded in on itself to create a dam against the rain.

  Elijah finished his breakfast first and immediately set to work at dismantling the bivouac. When everything was folded away into his pack he turned to me and, with o
ne raised eyebrow, inquired as to my readiness.

  “May I have a moment of privacy?” I asked. “Please?”

  He sighed heavily but turned around. “Go on, now.”

  I dashed to the other side of the boulder to relieve my bladder; not only did I deplore the idea of his hearing me, but I also couldn’t bear his seeing the puddle it left behind. No matter how intimate we’d become, I would never be comfortable with that.

  The climb up to the Col de Prafleuri was steep and shingled with treacherously loose rock. Once we’d crossed the pass the walking was scarcely better, for we were faced with a dismal, barren landscape that was relieved only by scattered clusters of Androsace alpina, their gentle shades of pink and scarlet a welcome sight amid all the gray.

  On and on we climbed, heading toward the Col des Roux. By then I was hungrier than I’d ever been, so ravenous that I could think of little else beyond my next meal. The view from the col, however, was stunning enough to make me forget about my empty stomach, at least for a minute or two. It was as if we had stepped into another world: behind lay the monotony of gray, rock-strewn slopes, while ahead was a perfect Alpine landscape. Lush meadows swept down to the shores of an indigo-dark river, the entire panorama framed by snow-capped peaks. Above, the sky shone bright and clear, the only clouds mere wisps of ivory wool.

  “There’s a refuge not far from here, on the shores of the Dixence,” Elijah said. “The keeper will have food.”

  Within an hour we were knocking on the door of the refuge, a long, low stone structure that appeared almost as ancient as the overhanging mountains. Elijah bought bread and cheese and dried apricots from the keeper, we filled our waterskins and washed our faces at the buvette, and then we set off in search of a spot to eat en plein air.

  We found a relatively flat patch of ground another half mile to the south, and once Elijah had spread out the smaller of the groundsheets to protect us from the still-sodden ground, we sat down and got started on the hard work of filling our stomachs. After I’d eaten enough to take the edge off my hunger, I pulled out my sketchbook and set about capturing the view from where we sat.

  Yet it eluded me. Though landscape had never been my forte, I was more than capable of rendering a simple, though beautiful, scene such as this. But it wanted something, some spark of interest to animate the whole.

  While I sketched, Elijah finished his meal and, rising, walked south, no more than a hundred yards distant. He stood there, lost in thought, his arms at his sides. He looked so perfectly at home, so elementally part of the whole. Hardly daring to look away, I penciled in his figure; color would have to wait for later.

  A shadow loomed over me and I started, just a little. Elijah must have walked back while I was adding some finer details to my sketch.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Of course. Where are we heading now?”

  “That way,” he said, pointing south. “We cross the river—there’s a ford—and then it’s back uphill until we reach the Col de Riedmatten. After that it’s downhill to Arolla. We’ll be there by the end of the day.”

  The path veered south, closer to the banks of the river, which was running low despite the recent rain. We passed a party of walkers, pausing briefly so Elijah might speak with their guide, but continued on without introductions being made.

  “That,” he said after we’d left them behind, “was Tomas Mueller.”

  “The busybody?”

  “The very one.”

  “I didn’t like the look of him.”

  “Good thing you picked me,” he said, appending a wry smile to his words.

  I was still wondering about that smile when we arrived at the river ford. The water was deeper than I’d thought, certainly deep enough to be dangerous if I lost my footing.

  “What shall we do?” I asked, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.

  “Wait here.”

  He took off his boots, stowing them away in his pack, though he didn’t bother to roll up his trousers. He took my pack and, hoisting it on one shoulder and his own pack on the other, he stepped into the river. The water was high, reaching his upper thighs, and was likely as cold as the glacier that had birthed it. He crossed without difficulty, though, betraying no sign of discomfort. After setting our packs down on the far bank, he returned to me, presumably to take my hand and guide me across.

  I stepped forward, ready to plunge in, but before I could protest he threw me over his shoulder and stepped back into the river.

  “Elijah, really. This is most undignified.”

  “Easiest way to carry you. Stop wriggling—we’re almost there.”

  He set me down on the far bank and immediately went to his pack. From it he extracted a fresh set of trousers, socks and drawers, as well as his boots, and changed speedily out of his sodden clothes. I was very glad that the sun was shining so brightly, otherwise he would have been in danger of catching a chill.

  “Do you want to rest for a while?” I asked.

  “No. Are you ready to move on?”

  “Yes, but are you—”

  “I’m fine. And we’re almost at the col.”

  I looked up; he was right. It would be a steep climb, up the hill past wagon-sized boulders and shifting, unstable scree, but once we were through it was downhill all the way to Arolla.

  The Col de Riedmatten was far narrower than any of the other passes we’d crossed, consisting of a single notch that divided one peak from the next. The rocks on either side were balanced in the most precarious manner, with little preventing them from sliding down and blocking the pass altogether.

  “This pass is so narrow. Is it safe to cross?”

  “Safe enough. The rockfall is a legacy of last winter. An avalanche. Go on, now. I’m right behind you.”

  I stepped forward cautiously, choosing my steps with care, for a twisted ankle now would be little short of disastrous. I was so intent on watching my feet, in fact, that I didn’t hear the voices above us. Only when Elijah called out did I stop and turn around.

  “What is it?”

  “Someone’s above, messing about on the rocks higher up. Stupid bloody buggers.” He listened for a moment, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Vous là-haut! Vous allez faire tomber les rochers sur nous!”

  There was no answer; only silence.

  “Alice,” he said, his voice frighteningly calm. “I want you to move as quickly as you can—do it now.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Just go!”

  He was deadly serious. I began to walk forward, stepping carefully so as not to dislodge any of the surrounding rock.

  Far above, a crack as sharp as a pistol shot sounded.

  “Go!” he shouted, but rather than run away from the danger, he ran toward me. I looked up, stunned into immobility, and saw a mass of darkness crashing down. I fell to the ground and covered my head with my hands. And then I was being carried, pulled, pushed, and the noise was terrible, the dust even worse, and I choked and coughed and wondered if I were dying.

  As if from a very great distance, I heard someone calling my name. “Alice. Open your eyes. Can you hear me, Alice?”

  I opened one eye, then the other, and when I was finally able to focus, I realized Elijah was leaning over me, his face white with shock, and I was lying on the ground on the far side of the pass.

  “Are you awake? Can you hear me?” he demanded.

  “Yes, yes. I can hear you. What just happened?”

  “Those idiots brought down a shed-load of rocks on our heads. I pulled you away, but several struck you.”

  “Oh,” I said. And then, since it was true, “It hurts.”

  “What hurts?”

  “My arm. My left arm feels terrible. And my foot...or is it my ankle? Everything hurts.”

  “Let me look at you,” he said, and as it pained my head to say anything I lay still while he poked and prodded. “You’ve broken your forearm. But your ankle is only sprained.�
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  Without pausing, he opened his pocketknife and slit the sleeve of my dress from wrist to elbow. Bending low, he examined my arm even more closely. A grunt of satisfaction told me he was pleased with whatever he saw.

  “What is it? What do you see?” I asked, my voice querulous.

  “Straightforward fracture. Not compound, thank God. Lie still while I fashion a splint.”

  He rummaged around in our packs, at length taking out my little easel. “If I promise to be careful, may I use the wood from this? I’ll repair it if I can.”

  I nodded—he might take it apart with a hatchet, for all I cared at that point—and he set to work at dismantling the easel, taking two of its three legs and packing away the bits that remained. He then pulled his spare shirt from the pack and ripped it to pieces, which he used to bind my arm to the pieces of wood.

  “I’m going to wrap your ankle, Alice. It will help keep the swelling down.”

  That accomplished, he closed up our packs and carried them away from the path. He covered them with the smaller groundsheet, which he weighted down with rocks at each corner, and returned with only our waterskins in hand.

  “I want to get you to a doctor as quickly as possible. I’ll send someone back to collect our things. Can you drink a little water before we set off?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Drink now,” he ordered, and when I was done he lifted me gently, my uninjured arm next to his chest, and began to walk downhill. The path was steep and uneven, with loose stones that would have tripped me up again and again, but he never stumbled, never faltered. I began to feel quite comfortable in his arms, so much so that it became difficult to keep my eyes open.

  “Sleepy...” I murmured.

  “Don’t fall asleep. You may have struck your head—you must stay awake, Alice. Just for a little while.”

  “So comfortable. Doesn’t...doesn’t even hurt.”

  “Listen to me. If you stay awake, I’ll talk to you. I’ll even answer your questions. Whatever you ask.”

  He couldn’t have offered a more appealing inducement. I racked my brain, pushing aside the cotton wool that padded my thoughts. Best to start with something innocuous.