Blackstone's Bride (21 page)

And the painting came back to her, the woman’s amorous stretch, the man’s arrogant bearing. The man’s right hand wore the ring, claiming his possession of the woman. A dizzying sensation washed over Violet. The faces around them seemed to blur.

“The man in the painting is not you. It’s not your hand on that woman’s . . .”

She lost her steps, faltered, and Blackstone pulled her closer, lifting her off her stumbling feet. “Not now, Violet. Keep moving.”

He turned her in a dizzying series of moves, but the whirling sweetness of the music could not drown out the voice in her head. Her mind raced back to Royce’s studio, back to years before. The man in the painting wore the signet on his right hand. And that was not the only difference. She could see it all now. It had been there, right in front of her. The man in the painting did not stand the way Blackstone stood, and Blackstone could not have been standing or sitting for Royce. He had been with Violet, nearly every day, in the weeks leading up to his father’s death.

She had only a brief note from him.
My father has summoned me.

Then he was absent from her, with no word, until they had buried his father and Royce had begun showing the painting. The painting had been an instant sensation in London.

The dance was breaking up. The dancers moving into their final turns and bows. He was going to leave her with everything unsaid, misunderstood.

“You didn’t know about the painting, did you? You couldn’t have known.” Violet’s chest ached, the pain concentrated in her heart. She wanted to stop dancing and press her palms against her chest. She had lost him not because he was a scandalous rogue who had loved another but because she had doubted and distrusted a good man and believed ill about him without question. She could see how it was. He had counted on her when his world turned against him, and she had failed him.

“Violet, you can’t undo the past.”

“If I had not broken the engagement, would you have married me?”

“After Royce made the painting public? Could I have involved you in the scandal as well?”

“You couldn’t stop Royce, could you?”

“My mistake. I underestimated his power and his greed.”

“He knows the truth, but he lets everyone assume.”
As she had assumed.
“But you never denied the rumors. You never told the truth.” She did not say,
You never told the truth
to me.
Her heart ached with the unspoken words.

“Other people would have suffered.”

His mother. His sisters. The man in the picture had been his father. It had only been the accident of Royce’s timing, and something in the man’s manner that had persuaded everyone to think it a portrait of the living son instead of the dead father. But Blackstone had allowed the mistake to stand. He had chosen disgrace rather than expose his father’s infidelity.

The room was a blur of noise and heat and faces. She saw the whole selfless imposture. He had not loved the beautiful woman in the scandalous painting. He had loved his family.

“Violet, look at me. Your face will give us away. Think of Frank. Frank needs you to be my fiancé for one more day.”

“Penelope believes I’ve given you up for good.”

“Violet, listen to me. We still have to get the prince away and get Frank.”

She nodded.

“Find your papa and make him take you home. And do not go anywhere with the countess, not to the ladies’ retiring room.”

She looked up at him.

“That cording she wears on every gown—that’s her weapon.”

“Weapon?”

“I’ll explain later. I’m going to get the prince and Cahul to the park. Remember the plan. In the morning go straight to Captain Rodriguez. Take someone stronger than Granthem with you, and a pistol.”

Her eyes widened at the pistol.

“I mean it, Violet. You’re to go up with the prince in the balloon, not Cahul. The captain will set you down in Hampstead or somewhere nearby as the winds permit. We’ll have people on watch. You will explain to the prince. And I will get Frank.”

Chapter Nineteen

“. . . I have thought only of you.”

—Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice

Frank woke to the throbbing of his swollen leg in his boot. The boot would have to be cut off him, if he lived, and Preston, his valet, would be desolate. Still he resolved to brave Preston’s displeasure. His mouth tasted foul, and when he rubbed his face, his hand came away covered in black grit. The night waned, and faint light from the ruined roof above him showed him his surroundings. He raised himself on one elbow to look through the tangled wreckage of his hiding place. He could see at once that he had to move.

Above him great charred beams stretched the width of the room against a pale gray sky. Beyond his hiding place other piles of debris littered the space. He could see now why Sackett and Glover had not pursued him in the dark. But even if they began a search for his body on the ground floor, it would not take long for them to uncover his hiding place in the ruined warehouse. He lifted himself onto his elbows and began to wriggle forward. He felt like a worm, and his injured leg protested with a stomach-turning jolt of pain. Plainly, he could not pull himself up to the rafters to escape through the roof.

The darkness through the arch at the end of the long room had its appeal, but he had seen no stairs at that end of the building. His heart pumped painfully at the sense of being trapped. He closed his eyes briefly and waited for inspiration. He listened to the drip that had first alerted him to the decayed state of the building. He opened his eyes again and forced himself to scan the room systematically. Somewhere there would be a bolt hole or an escape hatch.

* * *

Violet looked across the park at the greening rounded crown of Primrose Hill that made it seem a place for Jack and Jill to tumble down. It was hard to imagine flying over it, but that was the plan.

Across from her, a small encampment of white tents huddled under a stand of Hawthorn trees. Smoke rose from cooking fires. Violet tried to think only of Frank. She would not think him dead, but alive. Wherever he was this morning, he was a captive because he did not want the prince murdered. What had happened between Violet and Blackstone had been inevitable, the playing out of their story for a second time. She had no reason to feel her grief like a fresh wound. This morning she had her part to play, and if she did it well, the prince would be safe, Frank could come home, and Blackstone would be gone.

The prince came striding towards her from the camp with his usual childlike excitement. She accepted his arm as they walked from the camp towards a small crowd gathering on the green. Just a short flight, just to be borne by the wind like a low-flying cloud over a bit of forest and hill, and set down again. That’s all she had to do. Then Blackstone promised they would descend on Wapping and find Frank. Violet carried a small pistol in her bag, but she saw no sign of danger in the gathering spectators. The trees offered little concealment, being in their early budding stage.

Captain Rodriguez was just the man to inspire confidence in a woman facing her first air voyage. Tall and darkly handsome with a droll arch to one brow and a dark shadowed jaw, he assured Violet that she would make an excellent air traveler. He told her that he and his assistants had crossed wide spans of ocean a dozen times between Spain and Africa, and assured her that her brief foray into the atmosphere would be a breeze. Violet smiled at the humor.

A small band gathered, took a position on a wooden stand, and began to tune its instruments. The crowd shifted and chatted.

The captain introduced his assistants, a young African, Mr. Ali, in a fine naval lieutenant’s uniform, and a Mr. Danner, who wore a close wool cap and a sleeveless gray sweater. After the introductions, Captain Rodriguez turned with easy competence to the business of the launch. A wicker basket about the size of a small pianoforte stood in the center of the green, attached to what appeared to be a giant fishing net washed ashore full of a shimmering green catch. The captain signaled to Mr. Ali to attach a leather hose to a gas cask. While Mr. Ali turned the valve, Mr. Danner watched the unfurled globe begin to take shape. The prince kept the captain busy answering questions as the procedure unfolded. While the captain explained the clockwise winds and their likely speed and direction, Violet scanned the crowd. Nothing looked amiss. Of the prince’s people, only Cahul was with him, and he looked decidedly uneasy about the expanding balloon as if he feared some catastrophe. The rest of the captain’s men, looking much like Mr. Danner in wool caps and sleeveless shirts, positioned themselves to keep the crowd at a distance.

The crowd murmured and exclaimed as the pale green silk billowed and filled with lighter than air hydrogen, slowly tilting up from the ground until it bobbed lightly at the end of its tethers. The great globe was gaily decorated with crimson ribbons and cascading ivy vines. Captain Rodriguez moved around the wicker gondola, testing lines connecting the passenger basket to the towering balloon and braided ropes that led to four bags of sand lying in the grass, propped against the gondola. An anchoring rope secured the whole apparatus to a stake in the ground, where Mr. Danner stood on watch. His inspection complete, the captain warned Violet and the prince to stand ready. As the prince came forward, Cahul withdrew to a position next to Mr. Danner.

The band played, and members of the British Society of Aeronauts saluted Captain Rodriguez and his assistants. Mr. Ali placed a box of wooden steps against the basket and gave Violet his arm to help her up the steps. She sat on the lip of the basket and listened as he pointed out the difference between the lines leading down from the balloon to the sand bags and those leading up to secure the basket to the globe.

She swung her feet down into the basket and found herself afloat on the air. The basket tilted and bobbed under her, and she gripped the edge for balance. The prince followed, making a theatrical bow to the crowd before slipping between the guide ropes into the gondola.

Captain Rodriguez turned to the spectators. The band paused in its playing. He glanced at his assistants, who stood ready to release the balloon, and began to address the crowd.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, many a sheep, a fowl, and an aeronaut have risen to great heights, but today we have a rare chance for royalty to do the same. Today we are honored by the presence and the adventurous spirit of Prince Andre Sturdzi of Moldova.” Spectators whistled and clapped as the prince himself took another bow. The captain nodded to his assistants. The crowd held its breath. The band struck up again with a blare of horns and clang of symbols.

The captain smiled at Violet as he put his hand to the gondola. Then he jerked abruptly and staggered back, grabbing his left arm and slumping to the ground. His hat tumbled into the gondola as the balloon lurched upward.

“Cahul,” the prince shouted, pointing at his bodyguard, who stood over a fallen Mr. Danner.

Violet grabbed the edge of the basket, looking down, trying to understand what had happened. People milled and turned, craning to see what happened. From above, Violet could see Mr. Ali kneeling at the captain’s side and Mr. Danner lying on the ground by the stake. Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the captain’s assistants spring forward. He began to run towards them from the far end of the field.

“Cahul shot Rodriguez,” the prince said. He turned to Violet, utterly dazed.

“Sit down, prince,” Violet ordered.

Free of the stake, the anchor rope slid through the grass, and Violet and the prince rose in the air.

Some bystanders grabbed at the trailing rope, but sand poured from the ballast bags, a choking stream, which scattered the crowd. The rope, their last contact with the ground, slithered after them like a snake as the balloon rose fast. The running man never swerved or hesitated. He plunged through the stream of sand and threw himself after the rope, catching it as it lifted from the ground. He twisted it round his arm and it carried him dangling and twisting, knocking him against shrubs and low walls. He turned his face up to hers, and she laughed at his madness.

At last Mr. Ali caught up to him and grabbed his legs. Violet felt a slight tug on the balloon. Then other men joined hanging on, forming a chain. The balloon stopped its upward drift. It bobbed at rest above the heads of the men below like a boat at anchor.

“Are you mad?” Violet shouted down at him.

Blackstone shook his head. “Violet, there’s a line that opens a vent in the crown of the balloon. Can you pull it?”

Violet braced herself in the swaying gondola and looked for a likely line. More than a dozen ropes attached the basket to the globe above. She tried to remember Mr. Ali’s words when he helped her into the basket. As they bobbed at the foot of Primrose Hill, she reached over the prince for a line wound around a cleat.

“This one?” she called down.

Mr. Danner came running with a stake and a hammer. He gave her a nod. “Aye, lady, that’s the one.” Violet unwound the line from the cleat and gave it a pull. The balloon dropped with a stomach-flipping abruptness, and Violet slammed against the basket rim, nearly tumbling out. The prince yelped, and men scattered below them.

Blackstone grinned up at her, and she righted herself and tried again more carefully. The balloon settled to the ground. Blackstone reached her and pulled her from the gondola into his arms. For a moment she was lost there. She heard him swear and rail against her ear while his arms held on as if he would crush her. She reached up to stroke his cheek, to let him know she understood his anger. They had been so careless of each other, wounding without realizing how necessary they were to each other, necessary as air.

She pulled back from his embrace. “You do love me.” It was a wonderful discovery. It made her feel giddier than balloon travel.

He nodded. “No matter how hard I try not to.”

They had forgotten the prince. Other spectators helped him to the ground.

“Where are my people?” He was looking about in puzzlement. “Where’s Cahul?”

Blackstone could not let go of Violet. Mr. Ali quietly explained that Cahul had fired at Captain Rodriguez and knocked Danner on the head. Cahul was plainly long gone.

When Blackstone turned to lead Violet to her carriage, the prince began to follow. Young Ali and Mr. Danner stopped him.

“Lord Blackstone,” he shouted, “what’s happening?”

“Stay with the captain, Prince. You’ll be safe with him. Violet, you are going home with your groom.”

“You’re going after Frank?”

“Trust me. I’ll bring him back to you.”

* * *

Blackstone returned to the club to find Clare and Hazelwood waiting for him in the entrance hall.

“So you’ve slipped Goldsworthy’s leash, Blackstone.” Hazelwood took in the clothes Blackstone had borrowed from Rodriguez’s men.

“No use denying it,” Clare added. “We know you sent Wilde off on his own. A dangerous game to play.”

“And Wilde’s still not returned.” Hazelwood shook his head. “What are you up to, lad?”

Blackstone nodded grimly. “I’m to meet a ‘fair maiden’ this morning.” Hazelwood’s brows shot up. “Oh? Clare and I were rather looking forward to rescuing Wilde from low ruffians and breaking sundry villains’ heads.”

Blackstone recognized the alteration in the two men. All signs of indolence gone, they were armed and dressed for action. He realized he had never seen Hazelwood in clothes other than his soiled, rumpled evening attire.

“I would by no means deny you the satisfaction.” He grinned as he took the first steps up to his room. “Wait here.” He needed to make a swift change to keep his appointment with the countess.

Blackstone returned in minutes to explain the plan that had been taking shape in his head. With Wilde missing, he sent one of the cook’s boys to the stables. He tossed Hazelwood the little note he had received from the countess.

“Aren’t you a lucky sod, Blackstone. Here you are causing a fluttering in the hearts of ladies and girls who are no better than they should be and now some countess declares that”—he read the note—“‘Only you can save me, Blackstone. I put myself in your power. Come alone.’” Hazelwood pressed his hand to his heart and tilted his head to one side in an affected way.

Clare grinned. “This lady is of age, isn’t she? She writes like a chit of fifteen with her first Minerva novel in hand.”

Blackstone shook his head. He had a brace of pistols on him and was pleased to note that Clare and Hazelwood were similarly armed. “The lady is thirty, if she’s a day, and she’s as deadly as an adder.”

Hazelwood opened the door and they strode out. “Charming, and you’re meeting her alone to savor her bite?”

The three men descended the club steps. Blackstone kept an eye out for the vehicle they were to use. For once he was glad of the concealing scaffolding. But the first vehicle to pull up to the curb was not one of Goldsworthy’s discreet black chaises built for speed and anonymity. It was a familiar barouche with the top up and a familiar coachman on the box, but no footmen.

The door opened. The steps unfolded, and Violet Hammersley emerged, clad in sensible gray skirts and a plain black bonnet. He could see her boots peeping out from under the hem of those skirts.

She smiled at him, a smile that said she perfectly understood his noble manly intention of leaving her behind and was having none of it.

“Violet,” he began. “How did you find me here?”

“Captain Rodriguez was kind enough to direct me.”

Blackstone was conscious of the awkwardness of persuading his love to act against her will under the amused gazes of Hazelwood and Clare. “You see that I don’t go alone, and that we do go armed to this encounter.”

She produced a small but effective-looking popper pistol from her muff. “Yes, I suspected the occasion required arms. It’s the countess, isn’t it?”

He did love her. “How did your papa let you out of his sight?”

“Papa is taking care of the prince and Cahul.”

“Cahul?”

“He came blubbering back not five minutes after you left, begging to be forgiven for his part in the plot against the prince. In perfect English, I might add.”