by Mary Nichols
‘The maidservant? You are on terms with her?’
‘I persuaded her to co-operate on pain of telling the earl what she had done. She was more afraid of his lordship’s wrath than of the threat of prison and has been careful not to let him know what she did. She tells me what I want to know.’
‘Did she say what was in the letter?’
‘She did not know. The earl put it in his writing desk and keeps that locked. I do not think she dare try to open it.’ He paused. ‘I could try.’
‘No, definitely not. I forbid it.’
‘Mr Gilpin might have agreed to the wedding. After all, it’s been a long time and he might have thought...’ His voice tailed away.
‘Do you think I have not considered that? I have written to Mr Gilpin myself and put all the facts before him. I have assured him no one has violated Miss Gilpin’s virtue and she is safe with the nuns. He need not give in to the earl’s demands, but that is not to say he won’t. I wish he would set aside his business affairs and come out here. Charlotte needs him. Falsham would not dare to touch her if her father were with her.’
‘Perhaps he is on his way.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, but he was not at all sure. What sort of man put his business before the well-being of his daughter? If he had a daughter as lovely and sweet as Charlotte, her happiness would mean everything to him and he would abandon everything to go to her. But perhaps he was doing Henry Gilpin an injustice and he would come.
He had left Davy at their lodgings and made his way to the convent and this time he was going to be allowed to see Charlotte. He followed the nun into a small garden enclosed by a high wall and was shown where Charlotte was sitting on a bench beside a pool, contemplating the fountain which splashed sparkling droplets into the water.
She was very thin, he noticed, and the shapeless cotton gown they had dressed her in hung loosely on her. Her hair had been washed and brushed and hung to her shoulders in soft waves, held in place by a small lace cap. He stood and watched her for a moment. She looked sad, lost in thought. She had not seen him and he approached quietly so as not to startle her.
‘Charlotte.’ He spoke her name softly.
She turned towards him, her grey eyes coming alive and a smile lighting her face. ‘Alex, you came.’ She moved along the bench so that he could sit beside her.
He sat down and took both her hands in his, wishing he could take her in his arms and kiss her until she was breathless, but she was as fragile as the thinnest porcelain, no longer the healthy young lady who had left England six weeks before. It was hardly surprising; she had been ill on board ship which had left her weak and then all the worry of escaping from Falsham and working as a painter and, to top it all, being poisoned until she was near to death would have been the end of most ladies. He was thankful that she was recovering and that had to be enough for the time being. ‘Naturally, I came. Did you think I would not?’
‘Sister Charity said you have been here every day.’
‘So I have but they would not let me in. I have been very worried about you.’ He looked closely into her face. Her cheeks were hollow and there were dark rings below her eyes, but she looked a hundred times better than when he had brought her here. ‘How are you?’
‘I am getting better every day. The nuns have been good to me, given me nourishing broth and new baked bread and herbal medicines. When I have some money, I must repay their kindness with a donation to the convent.’
‘I have done that on your behalf.’
‘But I have no money.’
He grinned a little sheepishly. ‘Yes, you have. Davy relieved Mr Grosswaite of almost five hundred guineas before he left the Vixen.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, that is good to hear. Papa nearly died because of that and I hated the idea of that man having it. Does he know Mr Locke took it?’
‘He may have guessed, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.’
‘I hope Papa is well. I had hoped he would have written to me by now to say he was coming, but I have moved about so much, a letter could easily have been lost.’
He decided not to worry her with the news that the earl had heard from her father. She might think that writing to him and not her meant that he condoned what the man had done and had given his permission for him to address his daughter. The very thought of that made Alex’s blood boil. ‘Perhaps, or perhaps he relies on me to fulfil my mission and take you home. I hope to have word from him myself before long. In the meantime, you are safe here.’
‘Do you think Lord Falsham knows where I am? If he should come...’
‘If he knew where you were, he would have come before now, but in any case, the nuns would not let him in.’ He did not tell her the earl had made public his accusation that she had been kidnapped and his offer of a reward to anyone giving him information leading to her recovery and the apprehension of the culprit, believed to be Lieutenant Fox. ‘They would not even allow me in.’
‘I am sorry for that. I wanted to see you. Every day I asked and they said I must be well enough to be dressed and come downstairs before I could receive you. As if—’ She stopped suddenly. She had been going to say, ‘As if you had not seen me in nothing but a shift before.’ It brought the colour flaming into her cheeks and she looked down at their clasped hands. ‘Alex, tell me what happened. How did you find me? My memory is so vague.’
‘What do you remember?’
‘I remember being forced into a carriage by Madeleine, the Earl of Falsham’s servant, though I believe she is also his mistress, and a man she said was her brother. Carlos, I think. Yes, Carlos. They conveyed me to a house up on the hill towards the castle and locked me in a room at the top of the house. After that I am not sure what happened. I was desperate to escape, but I did not feel well.’
‘Senhora Salvador was slowly poisoning you.’
‘That is what Sister Charity told me, but why would she do that? Whatever had I done to her?’
He smiled and absentmindedly stroked the back of her hands with his thumbs. ‘You stood between her daughter and her daughter’s happiness. They both had great hopes of the earl. The foolish girl imagined that if you were not there the earl would marry her and she would become a countess and they would never be poor again.’
‘I doubt Lord Falsham would marry her.’
‘Of course he would not. He has set his mind on your fortune.’
‘He shall not have it. I will die first.’
‘You very nearly did. Did you not realise there was something wrong with the food they gave you?’
‘Not at first. When I arrived, I had a meal in the kitchen with everyone else, but after that it was brought to my room by the senhora. When I became too ill to eat it she gave me a cordial drink made of oranges. It was refreshing and I drank it all. I do not remember much after that.’ She paused to look into the pool where their two reflections were mirrored, side by side. The droplets from the fountain shimmered and distorted them and she returned her gaze to his face. There was no distortion there, he was the same handsome man she had known in London, but thinner and more serious. ‘Yes. Go on with what you were telling me. How did you find me?’
‘I went back to the coachworks to fetch you only to discover you had gone.’
‘I was waiting outside for you and when a carriage drew up beside me, I foolishly thought it was you and opened the door. They dragged me inside and bound and gagged me. If I had had my wits about me, I should have known it was not the landaulet you bought from Senhor Rodrigues.’
‘I thought it must have been something like that.’
‘They must have found out where I was and laid in wait for me.’
‘We searched everywhere, Davy and I. You were not at the earl’s villa, nor at the Minister’s Residency, nor even on board the Vixen, ready to sail with her. Captain
Brookside denied all knowledge of your whereabouts. I tackled Lord Falsham, but it was clear he had no idea of where you were either. He was angry and accused me of kidnapping you.’
‘That coming from him! He is the kidnapper, not you.’
‘It was Davy who had the idea of talking to his maidservant.’
‘She admitted where I was?’
He smiled grimly. ‘With a little persuasion.’
‘And so you found me.’
‘Yes. You were so ill I thought you were dying, but I could not leave you there.’
She shuddered. ‘Would they really have let me die?’
‘I do not think Madeleine knew what her mother had done until we arrived at the house, and her mother said she was trying to stop you shouting and banging and alerting the neighbours.’ He paused to smile at her, his brown eyes looking at her so tenderly her heart flipped. Was Sister Charity right? Could he be a little in love with her? Oh, if only that were true. ‘You must have been making a fearful din.’
‘I could not escape, so I hoped someone would come to me. The houses are close packed in that district.’
‘I shall never forget the sight of you,’ he said. ‘You were unconscious, close to death and bathed in sweat, your lovely hair plastered to your scalp and your face was as white as a sheet. I thought we had come too late.’
‘And then?’ she prompted.
‘I carried you out to my carriage and took you to the Residency. Mr Hay suggested you would be safest with the nuns.’
‘I think you have left something out,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I was wearing the midshipman’s shirt the whole time I was in that room. I arrived here in a shift I had never seen before.’
‘You remember?’
‘I remember gentle hands touching me and feeling better for it. I do not think they belonged to Madeleine or her mother for they would not have been so careful of me. It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘You needed to be washed to cool your skin and put into clean clothes. It was urgent and I would not trust anyone else with the task.’
‘I wish I had been awake.’
He smiled. ‘I am glad you were not. You would have been mortified.’
‘I am grateful for all you have done for me, all you are doing.’
‘I do not need your gratitude, Charlotte. I did what was required of me with a glad heart.’ His heart was full to bursting with love, but he held back from telling her so. She was weak, not her usual self, and she might agree to marry him simply out of gratitude and that was the last thing he wanted. No, he would wait until she was her usual robust, independent, outspoken self before he asked her to become his wife. He would risk more humiliation. And there was still the not-so-little matter of freeing her from the Earl of Falsham’s clutches and taking her back to England and the life she knew. Once there, she might very well reject him because her father refused to sanction their union. If he could be sure she loved the lowly sea captain, then would be the time to reveal himself as the Marquis of Foxlees.
He looked at her now, smiling at him, her lips slightly parted, almost inviting him to kiss her. The temptation was almost overwhelming, but he was aware of nuns working in the garden around them. They appeared to be concentrating on their hoeing and weeding and gathering of blooms, but he knew they were keeping a watchful eye out for impropriety. If he blotted his copy book, they would not allow him to see her again. He forced himself to stop looking at her mouth, but shifting his gaze to her expressive grey eyes was just as unsettling. It was not only her lips that invited him to kiss her, her eyes repeated the invitation. He glanced down at their entwined hands and lifted them to his lips, one by one.
‘What now?’ she whispered.
He chose to misinterpret her words. ‘You are right to remind me,’ he said, his voice rough with the effort of controlling his seething emotions. ‘We are not out of the wood yet and must think of ways of getting you home to your papa and everything you hold dear.’
‘Not everything I hold dear is in London,’ she murmured.
He did not know how to answer that without betraying himself. He released her hands and stood up to pace up and down. ‘You must stay here until a British ship arrives on its way to London and I can arrange a passage for us. That is if you will trust yourself to the sea again. We could go overland, but it would be more trouble to arrange for we should have to hire horses and carriages and stay in inns and it would take several weeks to reach Calais and take a packet to Dover. I do not think your papa would like that.’
‘We will do whatever you say,’ she said, realising he was not going to utter the words she longed to hear and which she thought she had seen in his eyes. If he had, she would have said she didn’t care how long the journey took as long as they were together. His failure to speak and his impatient pacing up and down cast her into despondency. How could he be so tender and loving one minute and change in the flash of a second into a hard practical man who could think only of how speedily he could relieve himself of responsibility for her? ‘After everything that has happened to me since, I do not think I shall be sea sick again. If I am, I am—I shall recover as I did before.’
He stopped his pacing to turn towards her. ‘I will employ a maid for you. You will need clothes and other things a lady needs before we go. I cannot take you back to your father looking like a waif.’
‘Is that what I look like, a waif?’ she asked, trying to make him smile again. When he smiled his face was alight, his eyes a soft light brown. When he was sombre or angry his eyes turned to green, hard as emeralds. She had noticed it before, but it had not been quite so obvious as it was now when she was alive to his every mood.
He looked at the simple garment she was wearing. It had no decoration of any kind and covered her completely from neck to feet, and yet it could not detract from her desirability. He wanted to strip it off her and feel again her smooth white skin beneath his searching fingers, to cover her with kisses. ‘A waif,’ he said firmly.
‘Are you going to take me shopping for clothes like the earl did?’
‘I am not the earl, nor anything like him,’ he said gruffly. ‘And you will not be taken shopping. It is unwise for you to leave here until a ship is about to sail for England and we can get you on board without being seen.’
‘I am surprised Lord Falsham still wants me if he thinks I have been with you all this time.’
‘Your fortune will allow him to be magnanimous and forgive your lapse,’ he said wryly.
‘Well he might, but I shall never forgive him.’
‘I will ask Mrs Hay if she will be kind enough to purchase clothes for you.’
‘I do not want anything fine,’ she said. ‘After all, there is no opportunity to dress up on board ship and I have plenty of clothes at home.’
‘I shall tell her that.’
‘I rather liked being a midshipman,’ she said wistfully.
‘And a very poor midshipman you made.’
‘Did you recompense the boy for the loss of his clothes?’
‘I did.’
‘Good. That is another thing for which I am in debt to you.’
‘You are not in my debt, Miss Gilpin.’
‘Oh, we are back to Miss Gilpin, are we? What happened to Charlotte?’
‘I forgot myself. I beg your pardon.’
She shivered. The sun, which had been blazing down from a cobalt-blue sky, was suddenly hidden by a dark cloud and the courtyard became cool and full of shadows from the nearby buildings. The mist made by the fountain, which had been pleasantly cooling, turned cold. She stood up, noticing the nuns gathering up their tools and hurrying back into the convent. ‘I think it is time to go indoors,’ she said.
‘Yes, I believe we might be in for a shower of rain.’ He fell into step beside her. ‘It will be welcome;
the ground is parched.’
The rain started just as they reached the door. He held it for her to go inside. ‘You must come into the anteroom or you will be soaked,’ she said.
‘A drop of rain will not hurt me. And I have much to do before we leave for England.’
‘But you will come back again?’
‘I will be back.’ He bowed formally and took her hand to raise it to his lips.
‘And when you come, Alex, I would wish you to forget yourself again,’ she whispered. And then she left him, running lightly into the dim interior of the convent, her white gown making a ghost of her, as she disappeared.
He groaned and went home, uncaring that he was being soaked by the rain which was running off the corners of his tricorne hat and trickling down his neck.
* * *
The sun was shining again the next morning and he was busy. His first call was to the harbour, where he discovered that a ship bound for England from the Cape was expected two days hence. Whether it would have room for passengers, he had no way of knowing until it arrived, but he would assume it had and make preparations accordingly.
Then he went to the British Minister’s residence, making his way through the garden and in at a back door, startling a cook and several kitchen maids who were preparing food. He smiled and put his fingers to his lips to stop them crying out and went on through a door on the far side which led into a corridor and thence to the front of the house. Here he was accosted by a footman who made every endeavour to throw him out.
‘I must see the Minister,’ Alex demanded loudly enough for that gentleman to hear him if he were nearby.
‘Not coming in like a thief in the night, you don’t.’
‘It is broad day and I am not a thief and I know if you were to tell Mr Hay I am here, he will see me.’
A door opened and an equerry came out. ‘What is all this hullabaloo about?’ he demanded, then, seeing Alex, ‘Oh, it is you, Lieutenant Fox.’
Alex shrugged off the detaining hand of the footman. ‘Yes, and I must speak with the Minister.’
