Julie Anne Long (4 page)

“That’s just it. What
can
we do?” Rebecca tried to keep the words light for Lorelei’s sake, but her voice had gone thin with despair.

And after a moment, because they both knew the answer to the question was
absolutely nothing
, Lorelei carefully knelt down, mindful of not crushing her dress, and pulled her sister into a hug.

As threatened, the modiste arrived that afternoon and unfurled a length of pearly satin in the upstairs parlor, spreading it across a chair so Rebecca could see how it reflected the light from the window. Conscious of the sharp eyes of her mother, Rebecca obediently ran her fingers over it and tried not to flinch in revulsion.

It looks like a shroud,
she thought, and the now-familiar sensation of a giant hand closing around her throat returned. Rebecca imagined herself suffocating under the folds of that white satin, and her heart began to hammer. She swayed, and tiny black dots danced before her eyes. For the first time in her life, Rebecca nearly fainted, all thanks to a bloody bolt of satin.

The modiste and Lady Tremaine misinterpreted her pale cheeks and the swaying and were utterly charmed.

“It is fitting for a young bride to be excited,
non
?” said the modiste as the two women lowered Rebecca into the satin-draped chair with motherly clucks. “It will be all right,
ma chérie
. After the wedding night, you will see.” She gave Rebecca a particularly French wink.

Lady Tremaine gave the modiste a brief reproving frown and waved a lavender pomander under Rebecca’s nose.

But when her mother wasn’t looking, Rebecca returned the modiste’s wink. The modiste looked startled.
Let her wonder
, Rebecca thought.

Stripped to her underclothes, Rebecca submitted to being draped and pinned for the rest of the afternoon. She felt strangely removed from the proceedings, as though she had vacated her body and was watching a group of strangers from a polite distance.
This is not really happening
, she told herself.
It simply cannot be happening.

But when she saw herself in the mirror swathed in creamy satin, her mother and the modiste standing behind her beaming in pride, Rebecca finally understood, without a doubt, that it was.

Chapter Three

C
onnor was rubbing away at the scuffs on Sir Henry’s favorite saddle when the tack room suddenly darkened.

He glanced up from his work to find Rebecca hovering almost hesitantly in the doorway, blocking the sunlight. He was immediately suspicious; “hesitant” was not a word one typically associated with Rebecca Tremaine. She was wearing the pale pink riding habit he knew she despised—the color had been her mother’s choice. Secretly, however, it was one of his favorites; the pink seemed to collaborate with the multitude of reds in her hair to do wonderful rosy things to her complexion.

And then he glanced down and saw that she had a very good reason to be hesitant.

“Wee Becca, where on earth did ye get a musket?”

“It’s Papa’s. From the war.”

“And does he know ye’ve taken it out?” Silly question. It was hardly as though Sir Henry Tremaine would hand a musket to his youngest daughter with his blessings:
Go shoot something, m’dear.
Though Sir Henry had taught Rebecca to shoot with pistols, he had stopped short of bringing out the larger firearms, perhaps remembering just in time that she was in fact a girl.

“Papa is away in St. Eccles today. And he didn’t lock it up or hide it.”

“Well, he doesna lock ye into your room at night, either, does he, and just look at the trouble
that
wee bit of oversight has caused.” Connor shook his head ruefully. “Your poor, trusting da. Wee Becca, a man is entitled to believe his muskets are safe from his daughters.”

“Connor, I’d like to shoot a musket at least once in my life before I am married and can no longer do anything at all.”

To Rebecca,
anything at all
no doubt meant galloping a horse astride at breakneck speed or firing pistols at apples or laughing too loudly or reading and quoting from controversial books or . . .

Or simply being Rebecca.
He felt again that strange sense of strangulation on her behalf; his throat tightened. He massaged his neck absently, then swiveled to resume rubbing vigorously at the saddle, as though he could somehow erase the events of the past few days.

He turned to her again after a moment. “Well, and I suppose ye’d like me to teach ye?”

“Well . . . you were a soldier, were you not?”

“Aye. I was a soldier.”

“I’ve brought a picnic.” She lifted her other arm; a basket dangled from it.

“Oh, well, in
that
case.” He rolled his eyes.

“Do women in America shoot muskets, Connor?”

He smiled at the shameless appeal to his favorite topic of conversation: America. A place he longed to visit, and one day planned to call home. Rebecca had always been a rapt audience for his musings about America.

“No doubt American women shoot all manner of things with muskets, wee Becca. Wild beasts, Indians, their husbands. But
you
,” he reminded her, “are English.”

Rebecca held both the musket and the picnic basket up before her, mutely beseeching.

She would go whether he accompanied her or not, of that Connor was certain; she’d probably find a book about how to load muskets, or some such nonsense, and attempt it herself. He sighed. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to teach Lord Edelston’s future wife how to fire a musket.

“Have ye powder and shot?”

“In the basket.”

“May I see the musket, please?”

Wordlessly, she handed it to him. Just as Connor had suspected, it was in pristine condition. Sir Henry cleaned his guns for the same reason other men read books or whittled wood: because he found it soothing.

“All right, then,” Connor told her. “We’ll go out to the wood.”

Rebecca gave a cheerful little hop.

Rebecca’s mare danced and frisked so much as they rode out to the wood edging the Tremaines’ property that Rebecca struggled to keep her seat.

“Ye didna come riding yesterday afternoon, wee Becca. Pepper is happy to be out with you.”

He sympathized with Pepper. By the time the sun had fallen yesterday, Connor had realized he measured his own days by Rebecca’s visits to the stable.
And this will be what it is like when she is married,
he had thought.
This . . . absence. This silence.

“I
could
not come riding, as I was being fitted for a shroud,” Rebecca said darkly.

“Well, and isn’t that clever, to plan your wedding and funeral both at once.”

“I was being fitted for a
wedding dress
, Connor. Oh, and it will be quite lovely, too,” she said bitterly. “Trimmed in silver ribbon, as we’ve no time for beads.”

Connor opened his mouth to reply, but the image of Rebecca gleaming in pale satin and silver, her bright hair perhaps coiled and tamed beneath a circlet on her head, defeated his stock of glib responses. Rebecca, being led from the church by Lord Edelston, who no doubt at this moment was simply counting the hours before he could return to the gaming tables and spend his bride’s money . . .

Connor cleared his throat. “It sounds like a fine gown indeed, wee Becca.”

Rebecca snorted. “Well, no doubt you will see for yourself in two weeks’ time, as all the servants are invited to our . . . celebration.”

Two weeks.
Connor rode in heavy silence for a time, taunted by disquieting images: Rebecca in her wedding gown, on Edelston’s arm, in Edelston’s bed, her face, usually so glowing and animated, instead taut with misery . . .

In Edelston’s bed?
But she was still just a girl, wasn’t she?

And yet, in less than a fortnight, she would be someone’s
wife
.

Connor shook himself out of his bleak reverie and pulled his horse to a halt. They had reached the edge of the wood lining Sir Henry Tremaine’s property, out of earshot of the house and a safe distance from anyone or anything that might accidentally be blown to bits by an errant musket ball.

“See that large rock, wee Becca? We’ll put our apples on it, and use them for targets.”

Rebecca dismounted eagerly, leaving Pepper to nip at short grass. She poked about in the picnic basket for an apple, and then carefully arranged it on the rock and almost skipped back to where Connor stood.

“All right, wee Becca. Do I need to give a speech about how ye’ll blow your own sweet head off unless ye’re very careful?”

“Father gave me that speech before he taught me to fire a pistol, Connor.”

“Very well. Watch closely.”

Connor hefted the musket in his hand, then peeked into Rebecca’s basket. Bread and cheese and cold fowl and apples and a water flask and . . . two paper cartridges containing powder and balls. He smiled to himself. A very unorthodox picnic.

It had been years since he had performed this very drill, but it was still as innate to him as breathing; he often lived it again in his sleep. Crisply, he tore the cartridge with his teeth and took the ball in his mouth, shook a bit of powder into the pan and closed it, rammed the remaining powder, the ball, and the empty paper cartridge down the barrel, and pulled the cock all the way back. And then he lifted the musket to his shoulder.

All in less than a minute.

Rebecca gave a gratifying little gasp of awe.

“And will we be pretending the target is Lord Edelston, wee Becca?” Connor had drawn a bead on the apple.

“Oh, no, he’s much too handsome to shoot.”

Connor lowered the musket, feeling an unusual fit of pique welling up.

“So the lordling is handsome now, is he?”

“I never said he wasn’t
handsome
, Connor. For heaven’s sake, just look at the man. You’ve seen him, have you not? A veritable Adonis.”

“An
Adonis
?”

“Yes. A frightfully dim Adonis, I’m afraid. The first time I met him, when asked whether he thought women should serve in the army—”

“Oh, now, why’d you go and ask him a question like that, wee Becca?” Connor sounded pained. “A question calculated to fluster any man?”

“It would not fluster
you
.”

“Aye, but
I
am accustomed to you, wee Becca. And that, I assure ye, didna happen in one day.”

She made a face at him.

“Well, and what did Lord Edelston say when you asked him such a question?”

“He said . . . he said: ‘Well, you see, war is a messy business. One can get hurt. I am not even certain
men
should serve in the army.’ ”

A delighted smile spread slowly across Connor’s face.

“
Did
he now? Is that what he said, truly?”

“He was not jesting, Connor.”

“Which is what makes it so delightful, of course.”

“As I said:
dim
. What do
you
think, Connor? Should women serve in the army?”

“Well, if you must know, it’s my thought that they already do, wee Becca, though they do not collect a soldier’s wage. They tend the sick and wounded. They take care of homes and land and children while they wait for the men to come home. They suffer just as much as the soldiers, in different ways.”

“I
knew
you would understand.”

“Aye, I am like that,” Connor said with mock solemnity. “Very understanding. Now, shall I shoot the apple?”

“Yes, please, Connor. Perhaps we can pretend the apple is . . . the regrettable circumstance of my engagement.”

Connor pretended the apple was Lord Edelston.

A deafening roar later, the apple was in smithereens, and smoke puffed around them. Rebecca coughed and clapped delightedly. Connor gave a bow, lowering the musket to the ground.

“My turn please, Connor!”

She scurried through the smoke to place another apple on the rock, and then held her arms out for the musket.

Connor talked her through the loading steps: “Aye, very good, tear the cartridge with your teeth and take the ball in your mouth, but dinna swallow it; no, dinna laugh, or ye
will
swallow it; close the pan now, good girl, just like that—all right,
now
spit the ball into your hand and load it and the powder and—good, good—now cock it.”

Rebecca leveled the musket at the apple, her finger on the trigger; Connor rested his hands on her shoulders briefly to give her form a gentle adjustment. And then he stood behind her, just shy of touching her.

“Fire, wee Becca,” he said softly.

She pulled the trigger.

The shock of the firing launched her back a step into Connor. His arms went around her; his senses briefly took in firm female and the scent of something sweet and heady; her hair, perhaps, or the nape of her neck. He exhaled slowly, loath to relinquish the scent of her, and pushed her gently upright again.

They waited for the smoke to clear before ascertaining that the apple had indeed been blown to Kingdom Come.

“Well done, wee Becca. Wellington would have been proud.”

“Thank you, Connor. But I suppose that’s all the shooting we can do. I could only find the two cartridges.” Her face was a study in regret.

He smiled crookedly. Rebecca was a vision, all long thick eyelashes and pink riding habit, her lips powder-blackened where she’d bitten the cartridge. Unconsciously, he reached out his thumb to rub the powder from her mouth.

The silky, generous give of her lip beneath his thumb shocked him. He froze, staring down at her for a moment, bewildered. He had reached out to rub Rebecca clean, and he had instead touched what felt very much like . . . like a
woman
.

A woman who would be someone’s wife in a mere fortnight.

He pictured Edelston forcing his rake’s mouth down upon that tender pink mouth . . . and he no longer found a shred of amusement in the image. He was rigid with disbelief that someone who was so much
less
than Rebecca would soon be solely entitled to her, to
all
of her, her soft lips and strong young body, for the rest of his born days.

Connor dropped his hand. “You’ve . . . powder . . . ” He motioned to his own mouth.

“Oh!” She laughed. “You, too.”

Rebecca fought valiantly to stifle a yawn, but the yawn was winning. Abruptly she bent to bury her face in one of her father’s prized damask roses, and the unfortunate rose took the yawn full force. Edelston, absorbed as he was in his own conversation—he was nattering on about wine, or something; she’d lost track as well as interest long ago—strolled on without her, and never noticed her quick pause. She caught up with him with one long stride before he turned toward her again. He did that periodically, Rebecca had noticed—turned his face toward her in order to maintain the pretense of including her in the conversation. Much like a weather vane in a spring breeze.

Papa had insisted Edelston come to call on her and take her for strolls, just as though he’d been courting her for ages, as though he hadn’t compromised her in this very same garden only a few nights before. So now she was trapped here with him, and it was a glorious clear day and Pepper remained in her stall again with no one to ride her. For the first ten minutes or so of her stroll with Edelston, she had diverted herself by admiring, in a very objective way, his handsome features. His gold hair lay in lovely tidy spirals all over his head, and he had very fine bold blue eyes—a bit small, perhaps, but effective when considered along with his Greek statue cheekbones and his elegant, piquantly tilted nose. His lower lip dipped in a sultry curve.

It was truly a pity he was so excruciatingly dull.

Edelston did one of his head turns then, and Rebecca, startled in the midst of her thoughts of boredom, made her eyes go wide and bright and interested.

Perhaps too wide and bright and interested.

Edelston slowed his stride. “And what thoughts do you have on the subject of wine, Miss Tremaine?” he asked, sounding peeved. “Do you agree with me that the Bordeaux region supplies the best grapes?”

“Thoughts?” Rebecca replied sweetly. “You wish me to have thoughts, my lord? You seem to have so many of your own, I hesitate to burden you with mine.”

Edelston narrowed his eyes and stopped midstride to look her over thoroughly.

Oh, dear
, Rebecca thought.

A great galloping rustic, Edelston had thought when he’d first met Rebecca Tremaine, but then again, any woman compared to the fair Lorelei was likely to suffer a similar description.