by Zoe Baxter
Chapter Three
Anastasia could have hurled her tea cup at Mr. Ambercrombie’s head as he exited the room. Jonathon Ambercrombie was a diplomatic underling, hardly more than a boy. How dare he challenge her? She was Lady Anastasia Carlton.
Polite society found her a bit eccentric, but her reputation was pure as the driven snow; however, a few more scenes like the one Lady Lomond had just witnessed, and Anastasia would be transformed in the eyes of society into a pathetic old maid who sought solace in the arms of frivolous young men.
"Mr. Ambercrombie is quite new, isn’t he?" said Lady Lomond, "quite new to town, I mean. Doubtless, he’s an old friend of yours?"
Anastasia wanted nothing more than to crawl under the divan on which Lady Lomond had arranged her ample body and not come out again until her sixtieth birthday.
Just a moment ago, she had made up her mind to cut Jonathon Ambercrombie dead from that day forward, and now she could not because she’d just been tricked into acknowledging a warm friendship with a man she’d only just met.
She was saved from answering Lady Lomond by the opening of the door. Mr. Ambercrombie was back again. He was holding a slim cream-colored envelope in his hand, sealed with a red wax crest that Anastasia had seen before, but could not place.
"I forgot," Mr. Ambercrombie said, "I was asked to deliver this message to Lord Westfaling. I was instructed to give it to him personally."
"My father is gone away for three days," said Anastasia, "I thought Sir Andrew was aware of that."
"He is," Jonathon answered, "but my message is not official business. It is of a more confidential nature. Perhaps, I might be permitted to have the address where Lord Westfaling is staying? Or if I leave the letter here, could it be forwarded?"
"We are not forwarding any letters to him. He is traveling, and they would only miss him in passing, but if you leave the letter here he will receive it when he arrives at home."
For the next thirty-six hours Lady Anastasia did not see Jonathon Ambercrombie. She tried to distract herself, but he intruded so often into her contemplations that she at last wished to see him in the flesh, so that he would cease to monopolize her thoughts.
In her mind, she rehearsed what she would say and do when she saw him again. Anastasia was determined to show him plainly that he had transgressed. She would make it perfectly clear that she would not tolerate being approached in the easy fashion he had adopted. She would establish in his mind, once and for all, that a friendship between them was quite out of the question. She was determined, in fact, to snub him as no rising young diplomat had ever been snubbed before.
Armed with these pleasant resolutions and foolproof plans, Anastasia was almost happy when, at a dinner to which she had gone, she found that Mr. Ambercrombie had been seated beside her. Lady Lomond was also a guest; in fact, Anastasia had been conveyed to the party in her Ladyship’s carriage.
Anastasia hoped that Mr. Ambercrombie would do nothing to magnify Lady Lomond’s suspicions. Anastasia was fortified against any untoward actions Mr. Ambercrombie might make. She had considered all the liberties he might take and how to respond to each one. Anastasia was so prepared that it took her some time to realize that Jonathon Ambercrombie was evidently not going to take any liberties at all.
Mr. Ambercrombie acknowledged Anastasia’s presence with distant politeness, then devoted his attention to the lady on his other side. He took part in the general conversation at the table, but never once said anything to Anastasia, unless one counted a request for her to pass the salt cellar. He barely glanced at her as he received it from her hand, and he took scrupulous care that their fingers should not touch as it transferred from her hand to his. So little attention Mr. Ambercrombie paid her that Anastasia began to feel quite invisible.
The gentleman on Anastasia’s other side was mostly deaf and impossible to converse with unless she resorted to shouting; for lack of anything better to do, she listened to Mr. Ambercrombie’s conversation. He was clever and spoke with far more maturity than his face belied.
Mr. Ambercrombie ignored Anastasia for so long that by the time dessert was served she was feeling rather piqued. Anastasia started to worry that if Lady Lomond noticed Mr. Ambercrombie’s coldness towards her the old gossip might misinterpret his silence as the aftermath of a lover’s quarrel.
Dinner over, Mr. Ambercrombie, without making it obvious to anyone but herself, contrived to avoid her once more.
Then there was further cause for vexation. Mr. Ambercrombie shamelessly ingratiated himself to Lady Lomond. Lady Lomond’s sole topic of conversation was—as it was on all occasions—shoddily supported tales concerning any person not present in the room. Lady Anastasia wondered that Mr. Ambercrombie—who appeared to have a perfectly good brain in his head—could devote himself to listening to such drivel for a full hour.
Anastasia was relieved when it was time to depart. She passed Mr. Ambercrombie with the slightest of bows as he held the door open for her.
She was happy to be rid of his odious company, but she rejoiced too soon. When she followed Lady Lomond down the steps, Mr. Ambercrombie, running lightly after them, got into Lady Lomond’s carriage with them.
"I asked Mr. Ambercrombie to come with us," said Lady Lomond. "If you do not mind, I should like to go home first, and I thought Mr. Ambercrombie could then escort you on to the Rue de la Place."
Lady Lomond was transparently pleased with herself. She was convinced that she had done a very clever thing in giving Anastasia and Mr. Ambercrombie an opportunity for a tête-à-tête. Perhaps, Lady Lomond did believe they’d had a lover’s quarrel. How profoundly embarrassing. The greatest gossip in all of Brussels believed that she, Lady Anastasia Carlton, was carrying on with a younger man.
"Thank you," said Anastasia, stiffly, "but I am afraid that will be taking Mr. Ambercrombie out of his way. It is quite unnecessary. I drive alone often."
But Lady Lomond was determined. She would hear none of Anastasia’s protests, and Mr. Ambercrombie proved to be a very poor ally. In fact, his behavior in matter was calculated to reinforce Lady Lomond’s worst suspicions.
Anastasia gave up. She stopped speaking altogether and invoked silent anathemas on Lady Lomond's head for her officiousness. She would treat Mr. Ambercrombie to a dose of his own medicine. He had ignored her all evening, it was now his turned to be ignored.
But ignoring Mr. Ambercrombie proved more difficult than she’d anticipated, for the moment Lady Lomond entered her own house and the carriage started moving again, Mr. Ambercrombie moved into the vacant place beside her. His face was in shadow, but from time to time light a street lamp illuminated his features. He looked at Anastasia gravely before he finely spoke.
"I have both longed for and dreaded this moment,” he began. “Lady Anastasia, I must speak to you on a matter of utmost importance, but it is not a subject I care to touch on in the presence of others.”
Anastasia was curious, but she was still angry with him. She refused to give him any satisfaction by betraying her interest in the matter, so she remained silent. He was too near to her. He was not a large man, but he seemed to fill up the interior of Lady Lomond’s carriage. He leaned in closer. She could feel the warmth of his breath and the scent of him. He smelled of pipe tobacco and brandy. She fought to stay angry, but another feeling—an unfamiliar feeling—was taking over. What would it be like to be kissed by Mr. Ambercrombie, she wondered? She hadn’t been kissed in years. If she kissed him first, what would he do? Doubtless, Lady Lomond believed that she and Mr. Ambercrombie were kissing at that very moment—or something of an even more scandalous nature. It was only a matter of time before Lady Lomond started spreading rumors. If she were going to be the subject of gossip regardless of what she did, Anastasia thought wickedly, why shouldn’t she—
Her wayward imaginations were interrupted by Mr. Ambercrombie. After a long pause, he had begun to speak again, but he spoke haltingly as if struggling for the words to convey his meaning
.
“What I am about to tell you—well, it will doubtless be a matter of complete—complete indifference to you.”
He paused again. They had stopped under a street lamp, and she could see his face clearly. She should turn decorously away, but she could not take her eyes off of the small pale scar that ran across his left cheek bone. Unbidden, she reached up with her gloved hand to trace its trajectory across his cheek.
Unconsciously, it seemed to her, Mr. Ambercrombie reached up and took her hand in his.
“There is a serious matter which is causing me great distress,” Mr. Ambercrombie said.
He was still holding her hand, and through her glove she could feel him making little circles in her palm.
She tried to remember some of the chill and cutting remarks with which she had intended to show him how great was the distance that divided them, but she was unable to recall a single one.
"I am going away," Mr. Ambercrombie said. "By this time tomorrow, I’ll have quit Brussels forever."
Jonathon looked down into the shocked face of Lady Anastasia Carlton. She was taking this declaration that he was going away exactly as he’d hoped she would. He tamped down his guilt. Lady Anastasia might be nothing more to him than a means to an end, but he hadn’t intended to land her in such a mess. It was inevitable that Lady Lomond would talk, and Jonathon was very much afraid that the lovely Lady Anastasia’s spotless reputation was going to be, at least temporarily, tarnished.
"Going away?" Lady Anastasia said. "But you’ve have only just come. Why are you going away?"
"I made a promise to myself that I would accomplish a certain task in a certain space of time. My time ends tomorrow morning, and the task remains uncompleted. That is why I shall leave Brussels tomorrow afternoon. I am ashamed of my failure, and my superiors who placed their faith in me will be sorely disappointed; however, those two things aside, I should not mind my failure quite so much if there were not another matter which troubles me deeply."
This was Lady Anastasia’s cue to inquire into the nature of the matter that troubled him so deeply, but she remained silent. They were nearing the Rue de la Place. Time was precious.
"You do not ask what is troubling me. You shall probably think even more poorly of me than you already do, if I reveal my secret to you, but I feel compelled to tell you, even should you scorn me because of it."
Lady Anastasia’s eyes had not left his face since they’d paused under the street light. The carriage lurched, and she swayed so close to him that had he not had an odious task to perform, he would have closed the gap between them and claimed her mouth with his. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to kiss a woman so badly. She was so good, so clever and so very beautiful. He was halfway to falling in love with her. It would be a shame if she ever found out why he’d approached her in the first place. Lady Anastasia Carlton was a proud woman. She would never forgive him.
"Whenever I leave Brussels,” Jonathon continued, “I feel like a moth who goes out into the dark night while still longing to be fluttering his wings round the light which dazzled him. The moth will be scorched if he comes too close to the flame—but that is not the thing that troubles me deeply—may I tell you what it is?"
He had a minute and a half, no more. He should have left out the part about the moth, but it was so poetic. Women like Lady Anastasia appreciated the poetic.
"You have not waited for my permission so far," Lady Anastasia replied, a bit petulantly. She withdrew her hand from his as if she’d just noticed he’d been holding it, although he was quite sure she’d been completely aware of it all along.
"There is no time for delay," Jonathon continued. "The thing that troubles me deeply is that I have added to my failure an unnecessary piece of stupidity which I deplore. It is a great aggravation to me because I have lost something which I have not yet been able to recover."
"Whatever do you mean, Mr. Ambercrombie?" Lady Anastasia’s tone had softened considerably. She was going to take the bait. He could feel it. Despite her own better judgement, despite her superior intelligence, she was going to be the pawn sacrificed in his little diplomatic gambit. Victory was within his grasp. He had only to make the final move.
"Lady Anastasia, it is in your power to do me an inestimable service.”
He had her full attention.
“You can soften my disgrace and give me a chance to salvage my ruined career,” he said.
“But what does any of this have to do with me?”
“I wrote a letter—the letter of which I spoke to you—to your father, on a private matter. At the same time I was writing the letter, I had on my desk an important and strictly private paper I was copying for Sir Andrew. That important paper is now missing and everyone is asking the question: could it, by my carelessness, have been placed in the envelope directed to Lord Westfaling. If so—"
"I don’t see what I can do about that," said Lady Anastasia, but it was less a statement of refusal than an expression of regret.
"You can allow me to open my own letter—in your presence—and to seal it up again, after taking out the accidental enclosure, if it is there.”
She made no answer, so he carried on. “If I can recover the lost paper, it will neutralize what will otherwise be a very disastrous piece of bad luck."
"I do not see how it would be possible for me to do so," said Lady Anastasia. “My father returns at ten tomorrow. What reason could I give him for having interfered with his letters?"
Jonathon had not expected her to agree. Not right away. Not that evening. He had planned for this turn of events.
"If you would allow me to call,” he said, reclaiming her hand, “and say good-bye to you at a quarter to ten—“
She did not attempt to withdraw her hand, but she did not agree to see him, either. The carriage had reached Rue de la Place, so Jonathon played his final card.
"In any case,” he said, as he raised her hand to his lips, “it would be a favor that I should prize immensely, and it is the last I shall ever ask of you."
