A Heart's Treasure (22 page)

There was little conversation as they moved inside the inn. Laura didn’t even demand that her trunk be brought up. Genevieve trudged after her up the stairs, at the foot of which she heard Xavier request that a simple meal be sent up to the ladies, and one to the men’s room belowstairs.

The four women found they’d been assigned one room, not near so large as the one they’d shared in Long Itchington. Two beds were pressed right against each other, leaving just enough room at the foot for one person to pass along the wall. Opposite the outermost bed, there was just enough room for one dressing table and four elbow-to-elbow females to stand. The single window was closed, and the air in the room was too warm and stagnant, until Laura threw it open.

“We’ll have to dress and undress only two at a time,” Penelope declared sourly.

“Oh dear,” Summer said. “But at least it’s only for one night.”

“How many more days is it until we come to Brockmore?” Genevieve asked, not able to keep a tartness from her voice.

“If we travel no faster, and the roads don’t improve, as much as four days,” Laura replied hollowly.

Everyone made a face, except Summer. “Michael will not take so long as that,” she said. “He’s quite a creditable whip, in case no one has noticed.” Her face glowed in the candlelight.

Genevieve frowned at that glow, then reached out and took Summer’s arm. “There’s no room to take a meal in here. We’ll need to descend to the common room once more, unless by some miracle a sitting room may be hired. Summer, let us sit upon the beds and leave room for these other two to change into something suitable for supper.”

They crawled over the beds as Penelope moved to unfasten Laura’s dress ties. If she yet resented the conversation they’d had, Penelope didn’t let it show.

Penelope and Laura donned simple muslin dresses, a bit wrinkled once they were pulled free of their cases, and no amount of shaking would make them less so. The ladies brushed out their hair, and pulled each other’s into simple knots to save time and energy, completing their toilettes just as there was a knock at the door. Laura opened it to find the inn’s mistress with a large tray in her hands, an assortment of foodstuffs arranged thereon.

“My good woman, have you a sitting room where we might dine?” Laura asked.

“No, m’lady.”

No one sighed because they’d not expected better. “Then we’ll take our meal in the common room, please.”

In one way it was a relief when Laura and Penelope left the room, but in another way Genevieve could wish them back. As she’d waited for room to stand, she’d pondered the row in the coach. Hearing outright that Penelope had been offered for by Kenneth, and directly seeing the dear lady hadn’t been unaffected by the offer and her parent’s refusal, had made Genevieve consider not just how Xavier felt about Summer, but how Summer might be coming to feel regarding Xavier.

As she stood still, allowing Summer to undo the multiple buttons down the back of her bodice, she opened her mouth to speak—but was interrupted.

“Genny, what do you think of Xavier?” Summer said in a quiet voice.

“Xavier?” Her voice was hollow, for her heart had started to pound wildly at the sound of that name on Summer’s lips.

“Yes.”

“What do I think of him?”

Summer made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Yes. What do you think?” she pressed.

“He is very cordial.”

“Yes. What else?”

Genevieve frowned fiercely since Summer couldn’t see her face. “He’s polite. Congenial. Gentlemanly.”

“Indeed. It was so very good of him to look after me during the rain, was it not? I thought I’d shiver myself to pieces until we shared that lap rug. He’s very thoughtful.”

Genevieve made an assenting noise, although every nerve inside her body was tingling, just as it did when she thought she was about to fall off her mount. She wanted to tell Summer to cease, to leave the subject be, to not reveal that she was becoming aware of a man other than Michael.

Summer went on, “And handsome, too, if one discounts the scar and the patch. Although they do lend an air of mystery, do they not?” She patted Genevieve on the back, a signal she was done undoing buttons. “And he has plump pockets as well. Not as plump as does Michael, but—”

Genevieve spun around, disregarding that her dress threatened to slide from her shoulders. “Summer, do you love Michael?” she cried bluntly.

“Oh yes,” Summer said, eyes widening a little at Genevieve’s anxious tone.

“Completely?”

Summer blushed red. “I rather suppose, yes.”

“But…do you ever…?” Genevieve’s voice caught as words failed her. She cleared her throat and began again in a calmer tone. “I mean to say, do you ever think what it would be like if you didn’t care for him? If you weren’t betrothed to him?”

“What an odd question, Genny,” Summer laughed, an unsteady sound. “No, I don’t think about that, not really.”

Genevieve met Summer’s eyes for a moment before the blonde girl turned decisively and presented her own buttons.

Genevieve began to work the buttons before her. “I suppose what I’m asking is…what I’m saying is…,” she finished quickly, “do you ever wonder what it might be like to kiss someone other than Michael? Or hold someone else’s hand? Or marry someone else?”

Summer looked over her shoulder, beginning to frown. “Don’t tell me you don’t wish me for a sister-in-law?”

“Oh no. That’s to say, no, I don’t mean that at all. I know we’d continue to get on famously. I think Michael is most fortunate you accepted him. It’s only that, well, I suppose I have been wondering if you’ve regretted…anything…recently?”

Summer turned her face away again, staring out into the room somewhere above the beds. “You mean, because it’s been so long since the banns were read.”

“Well, yes.” Genevieve stared at her fingers as they worked the buttons; they were almost as clumsy as her tongue.

“Yes,” Summer said quietly.

“Yes?” Genevieve echoed faintly.

“Yes, sometimes I regret having accepted him. Michael’s not tractable. He’s stubborn. Sometimes to a fault.” She turned to face Genevieve, her blue eyes sparkling with something perilously close to tears. “In all this time, he’s yet to tell me he loves me. Not even when he proposed. He said it would be a ‘fortuitous arrangement resulting in the blending of our affections.’”

“Oh, Summer, no, he couldn’t have.”

“He did. At the time I thought it rather charming. But now…”

“What are you going to do?” Genevieve whispered, for her throat was tight with tears that echoed Summer’s threatened ones. She heard the dread in her own voice.

“Do?” Summer drew back her head, a gesture that questioned Genevieve’s common sense. “Why, nothing. I’ve accepted Michael. I shall go to the altar with him, of course.”

And that was right where she ought to leave it, Genevieve knew. She’d no business interfering, and indeed, was afraid of more than one consequence if she did. But there were tears glittering in her friend’s eye yet.

“But what…what if there were another? What if someone else loved you?” Genevieve closed her eyes, to hide from her betrayal of her brother, as well as a betrayal of a secret corner of her own heart.

Summer gave no answer at all, so that Genevieve was forced to open her eyes. She found Summer staring at her, hard, or as hard as those genteel blue eyes could stare. “What are you talking about, Genevieve?”

“Love. Real love. We all deserve it, surely,” Genevieve went on a little wildly. “Papa says the notion of choosing a marriage partner only based on affection is poor management of one’s estate, but I find I happen to agree with the poets. I find I cannot bear the thought that…you…or Michael…need marry for anything less. For happiness. For joy. Am I too terribly foolish?”

The blonde girl’s eyes searched Genevieve’s face for a long minute, and by the time she turned away, she’d lost all signs of anger or tears in those eyes. “Oh, Genny,” she said on a sigh that had the faint edge of a laugh in it. “You have some romantic notions in your head. But we’re not talking about Michael at all, are we?”

“Well…I—”

“Please don’t fret. Everything will be fine. These things always work themselves out for the best, often in ways that surprise us.” Summer pulled the dress over her head, and tied the strings at the neckline and under her bosom, fitting it to her lithe form. She glanced in the mirror, all poise utterly restored. “My hair is quite well enough. Do hurry down, Genny love, or we’ll not leave you a bite to eat.”

“But—”

Summer didn’t wait, lifting a hand in a delicate wave of farewell, then ducked out the door, closing it behind her with a decided click.

Chapter 16

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

—Blaise Pascal,

Pensees

Xavier, glass of ale in hand, looked up when a lady entered the room, and felt a little guilty at the shot of disappointment that lanced through him. It was Summer, not Genevieve who’d latest come to join them in the inn’s common room.

I’ve no right to be looking for Genevieve’s company,
he scolded himself silently.

But…was that true? Out of mere friendship alone surely he had the right to look forward to any person’s camaraderie. He knew his restraints were self-inflicted—but need they be?

He’d called himself a coward before, and he burned with the idea of it again. He’d protected himself from shame for years; even now another eye patch dwelled in his waistcoat pocket against the chilling chance the one he wore failed somehow. Only a handful of people had ever seen him without his small black shield in place. His parents. Penelope, rarely. Haddy, just the once. …And two women.

Ah yes, the dastardly women who, he admitted even to himself, had only acted with a curiosity that ought not be unexpected. One woman he’d taken to bed, and in the end she’d asked to see all of him naked. He’d been drunk with lust, and young, and hopeful—so he’d dared it. And she’d looked upon his face with repulsion. The lust had evaporated, and the lady had fled.

The other, not two months later, had reached up—flirting? prying? simply cruel?—and slipped a finger beneath his patch to draw up the bit of black velvet, in the middle of a ballroom no less. She might as well have stripped him naked too, for the shock on her face had only proved all over again that he was disfigured. By sheer luck, no one else had seen what she’d revealed. His tiny moment of trust in letting her reach toward his face had been betrayed in the flick of a moment. Although he knew better, it had felt as if the whole world had howled to see how he was blemished. Marred. Defective.

But…he’d been scarce a grown man then. These days his friends, in the common flow of things, thought little if anything of his old injury. The only one keeping him prisoner to his fears was himself. He saw men, everyday, far more stricken than he, men who laughed and married and ran businesses and…

He shuddered. It went against every fiber of his being, against all his rules and ways of maintaining safety…but he must try to outstrip embarrassment, and dread, and pride.

I’ll step forward. I’ll take a chance. I must,
he told himself. Not that he’d let anyone…someone…see beneath his eye patch. Dear God, no. Not that. But where he wouldn’t show his ugly wound, perhaps he could expose his thoughts, just a bit. To see if perhaps there was a special woman who could look beyond the surface and not find his secret heart entirely wanting.

Now he just had to find the right moment…

* * *

Genevieve, of course, was last to arrive at the common room. There was no sign of upset among the group, if one discounted that Laura and Penelope sat as far apart as possible at the same table.

She swept her gaze over the other occupants, and for a moment exchanged a long glance with Xavier. He’d turned when she’d entered the room, and the eye not covered by a patch had seemed to glitter at her.

Genevieve broke the stare they shared, perhaps a trifle rattled by something she couldn’t even name, to sit next to Michael. Her brother pushed a filled bowl of stew and a large hunk of brown bread her way.

“We were waiting for you,” he informed her.

She was about to ask why, but Kenneth made it clear by pulling a Little Riddle from his pocket.

“Ready?” He didn’t wait for anyone’s confirmation. “‘Here in Staffordshire, in 1487,’” he read, “’the Battle of the Stoke brought about the end of one fellow’s ambitions to wrest the crown from Henry the Seventh. Who was he, how did he call himself, and what was his eventual fate?’”

“Why, that’s simple,” Haddy cried, leaping to his feet as several heads bobbed knowingly around him.

“Go ahead,” Kenneth grinned, responding to Haddy’s pleased expression.

“It was Lambert Simnel, who called himself one of the two missing princes in the tower, son of Edward the Fourth. He was captured and for punishment made to turn the spit in the royal kitchens. Am I right?”

“You know you are.”

“That was too easy. Do let us have another,” Laura complained.

“Not until I’ve had my kiss,” Haddy said, hands on hips as he gazed around the table.

“There goes any shred of reputation we had hoped to maintain,” Laura grumbled.

Haddy grinned, and leaned down to plant a wet, noisy buss on her cheek. This didn’t go unobserved, as a murmur ran through the locals in the room, along with a couple calls of “Huzzah!”

Haddy leaned down toward Laura, looming. “May I take another?”

Laura glared at him, pushing him away with one hand while he laughed. “If it weren’t for the fact I wish to be present when the Treasure Hunt clue is read, I would leave this table at once.”

“Haddy, that was really too bad of you,” Summer tried to scold her brother, but she couldn’t force down her smile completely.

He sat down, totally unabashed. “’Bout time Laura was kissed, I say.”

That lady rose to her feet, her face flushed, and it was only by physically putting hands on her and uttering half a dozen soothing comments that she was persuaded by the group to remain. She sat very straight in her seat and said, “At the next inn, I insist, Kenneth, that you and I be registered under false names.”