My Pleasure (34 page)

Helena regarded her in consternation. “Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Winebarger took a deep breath.“I am the woman who came to Ram’s house two nights ago. The night you were there.”

Helena stared, stunned beyond words, suddenly hating this lovely woman, hating the easy familiarity with which she said Ram’s name, hating the sympathy in her pretty eyes. It all made sense: the lovely Prussian’s intimate knowledge of him and his family, her familiarity with his salle, the always conveniently absent husband. This was the woman Ram had said was to be shown in no matter what his state or whom he was with.

Worse, though, even more devastating a blow than the revelation of Mrs. Winebarger’s relationship with Ram, was the implicit knowledge that he had told Page about her. About them.

“He told you about me?” she said hollowly. She stood up. Why hadn’t he protected her dignity, or rather what little he’d left her?

Mrs. Winebarger nodded.“Yes. A long time ago. Before we even met. That is in part why I accepted Lady Tilpot’s invitations—because I was curious about this young woman with whom Ramsey was so smitten. Especially as I don’t even think he realized it himself.”

Helena’s heart skittered into an anguished rapid beat.

“You were afraid you would be replaced?” she asked.

“Replaced?” The lovely aqua-green eyes widened. “Oh, my dear. No! I came to Ramsey’s house to tell him I had lost you!”

“What?”

The woman was clearly stricken with embarrassment. Her cheeks were pink with it. “Ram asked me to watch out for you. To befriend you.”

“Why?” Helena sank back down onto the settee, bemused. “I don’t understand.”

“My husband and Ram share a love of fencing,” she said, her gaze somber, “but they also shared a French prison cell. The English are not the only ones with whom France is, or has been, at war.

“Ram helped my Robert escape. A few years later, when he heard of Ram’s own release, we came to England. I wanted to meet the man who had saved my Robert. We became fast friends, the three of us, and have kept in touch through the years.” She smiled tenderly.

“Then when Robert entered this tournament we took the opportunity to renew our friendship. In the course of our conversations, I mentioned that I had met you, whom he had spoken of in the past. It was clear to me that Ram worried about you, something you had done, some risk he perceived you to be in. I asked what I could do to help.” She lifted her shoulder as if the rest was a matter of course.

“But why? Why would he—”

Page shook her head. “My dear, he loves you. Didn’t you know that?”

Helena stilled. Loved her? No. It wasn’t possible. He had never come close to making such a declaration. He felt responsible for her. He wanted her. He had an obligation to her family.

“No.” She shook her head, refusing to believe this siren’s song. “He is perhaps infatuated. But as soon as he tires of me, there will be another to take my place. Why, all of London,” she repeated Jolly Milar’s words bitterly, “is littered with Ram Munro’s past lovers.”

Page hesitated. “If Ram knew I was telling you this…” She trailed off, troubled and uneasy, but then took a deep breath and began. “Let me tell you about a young man who was raised by loving parents to believe that despite his illegitimacy he was as good as anyone else on God’s earth.

“But when he is nine his parents die, and he is sent to a workhouse where, for a few terrible weeks, the brutal reality of his situation is born in him with unerring efficacy. Then, almost miraculously, or so it would seem, he is rescued from the workhouse by a priest and brought to a tiny abbey secluded deep in the Scottish Highlands, where he is given a reprieve from the life that awaits orphan bastards without friends or recourse. There he finds a new family, loving guidance, and brothers of the heart, and is reassured of his value, his worthiness. He begins to believe in it again.

“This boy grows into a young man of surpassing masculine beauty, but not so beautiful as his spirit, which is generous and noble and brave. So noble and brave that he and his comrades agree to go on a dangerous mission at the behest of his benefactor, the abbot.”

“The French debacle,” as Ram had called it, Helena realized.

“But they are caught, the boy is tortured and branded and forced to fight in duels. Then he watches a beloved friend executed, knowing that one of those whom he trusted and loved had betrayed them.

“After a near-miraculous release, he is freed and travels to London. And there he is, twenty-three years old, haunted, beautiful, and experienced in ways no young man ought to be, and inexperienced in ways no young man ought to be.”

Warmth spread in Helena’s cheeks. She understood: Ramsey had been a virgin. Mrs. Winebarger’s next words confirmed it. “He was primed to fall in love. She was a baronet’s daughter. Pretty, captivating, headstrong. Amoral. She wanted Ram. She wanted him, and she set out to get him, and this young woman always got what she wanted.”

“And Ram?” Helena asked softly.

“Ram fell madly in love with her. And he thought she loved him, too.”

Helena’s eyes fell.

“He asked her to marry him.” Mrs. Winebarger’s eyes grew flinty. “Well, you can imagine her surprise and amusement at that. Ram was very handsome, yes, and a grand and ardent lover, but she was not going to marry a bastard Scot. She would, however, keep him for her lover after she wed the neighboring earl’s rich, corpulent, middle-aged nephew.

“As you can well imagine, Ram declined her proposal very politely, and told her they would not be seeing each other again. And then he went a little mad. He did, indeed, cut a wide swathe through the rows of eligible and willing young ladies who flung themselves at him. If he was to be used, he might as well enjoy it.”

Helena looked away, hating to hear the confirmation of all she feared, all she had heard.

“Except,” Mrs. Winebarger’s voice softened, “he didn’t enjoy it. He quit debauching rather soon after he began, a little ashamed of himself, I think. A little disgusted.

“And then one night at Vauxhall, he encountered you. It wasn’t the first time. He’d watched over you for years. Ah? I see you know that. I wonder how. He told us how circumspect and discreet he was in his observance. Nothing untoward or disreputable must attach itself to the fine Miss Helena Nash’s good name, and what could be more disreputable than Ram Munro?

“He had half fallen in love with you already, watching you, I think. You seemed to him perfect. Serene and detached—untouched by your fall in the world. Uncorrupted by the base passions that had for a short time swallowed him.”

“It is all a fake,” Helena murmured. “A sham. A mask.”

“Some,” Mrs. Winebarger agreed. “But not all. He didn’t know that. All he knew is that you suddenly appeared at Vauxhall in boy’s clothes, telling him you were meeting a married man, saying you wanted an adventure.

“Given his history, is it any wonder he distrusted you or the feelings you awoke in him? No. What is a wonder is that he ignored all the evidence of his eyes and ears and fell in love with you despite the fact that you seemed cut from the same cloth as the young woman who’d broken his heart.”

Helena looked up. “You make me sound small and wretched, and him noble and munificent. But he knew who I was. He made a decision to keep me ignorant while he judged me.”

Mrs. Winebarger nodded sadly. “Yes. He was wrong. But maybe he wanted you to prove yourself by your willingness to reveal your identity to him without being asked.”

“To test me,” Helena stated baldly. “Because he did not trust me. I do not say I was right to keep my identity from him, but at least I did not ask him to prove himself to me.”

“But he has proven himself. Time and again,” Mrs. Winebarger answered quietly. “He had me watch out for you. He asked the marquis, whom he has always held accountable for his parents’ deaths, to go with him to Lady Tilpot’s so he could see for himself what danger you stood in. Can you imagine how bitter that request must have been for him to make? Yet he did so without hesitation. What more can he do?”

But he had done more! Helena realized, staring at her interlocked hands. He had done everything for her. Everything! Why, he was here, fighting a duel he was not in the least interested in, believing they had no future, simply because she had asked it of him.

And she? She had been too stupid, too blind, to see it, because of rumors. Because she had believed that any man so perfect, so handsome, could not own a true and faithful heart. Because she had judged him by appearances just as she herself had so often been judged. Because she had wanted him to trust her when she had never trusted him. She’d been so wrong. God, she deserved to lose him!

Dear God, she could not!

“I must find him.”

Page Winebarger smiled. “Yes.”

“I must—”

A small, grubby hand suddenly appeared on her sleeve and tugged. Helena looked up into the grimy, grinning face of an eight-year-old boy. “Bloke said as to find the prettiest blonde lady I could and I’d be speaking to Miss Nash. That right? That be you?”

“Yes?” Helena said distractedly. She must write a letter. No, she must seek Ram out at once. As soon as the tournament ended—

“Then here.” The boy pushed a rose into her hand. A beautiful yellow rose.

She leapt to her feet, spinning around, her gaze searching through the crowd. “Where is he?”

“He said you was to meet him behind the amphitheater, in the alley by the stables. Now.”

“But.” She looked to Mrs. Winebarger.

The Prussian lady nodded. “I’ll take care of Lady Tilpot. Go.”

Helena pushed her way through the dense crowd of spectators, lifting her skirts and dashing down the wide staircase to the main floor, but there traffic choked the front foyer. She wheeled around, slapped open a servants’ door, and found herself in a kitchen surrounded by the startled staff, ankle deep in vegetable parings and chicken feathers.

“I have to get to the stable alley. Which way is quickest?” she demanded.

Mutely, one of the girls stirring a pot lifted her spoon and pointed at a back doorway.

“Thank you!” Helena breathed. She needed to see Ram. She needed to tell him she loved him, that she was a blind prig of a woman who’d only seen the situation from one vantage, and never his. That she wanted very much to marry him if he could still want her. And then to beg him to please, please still want her.

She raced through the door and, true to the girl’s word, found herself in a fast-darkening alley, the walls of the amphitheater separated from the neighboring buildings by a narrow lane that ended a short distance away in a stable yard.

“Ram?” she called. “Ram!”

A figure stepped out into the dim light spilling from the tall windows overhead. It shone on a guinea-gold head.

“Not Ram, my love,” said Forrester DeMarc. “Not ever again.”

FORTE:

the lower, strongest third of the blade

The devil is here. He has seen me. If we are to meet it must be in the stables behind the amphitheater in one hour’s time. I will stay no longer. Bring with you the money.

Arnoux

Ram cursed roundly, crumpling the note in his fist. An hour? In an hour he would be fighting a duel, most probably with that damnably good Italian, Vettori. But how could he turn his back on Kit, on Douglas? He clenched his teeth in frustration, torn by the thrice-cursed choice he must make. Helena or the past? Helena, whose image burned like acid in his heart? Or the companions of his youth, his brothers?

“Mr. Munro?”

Ram turned. A dirty street urchin stood just inside the door of the small chamber reserved for the duelists. “What do you want, son?”

“I got a message for you,” the boy said, screwing up his face.

“Yes?”

Lord Figburt’s fresh face suddenly appeared behind the lad. “Ah! Here you are, sir!”

Ram regarded him in exasperation, thrusting the crumpled note into his pocket. Young Figburt was in the throes of an exalted case of hero-worship and Ram was in no mood to be idolized. “Come in, Figburt. Anyone else hiding out in the hall? Might as well let them all in. Make a regular party of it.”

Figburt blushed furiously but nonetheless stepped inside. “No. Just me, Mr. Mun—, er, milord. Thought you might want someone to rewrap the hilt of your sword.”

“No, thank you,” Ram said and turned back to the boy, who shuffled uneasily in place. “Now, you, young sir. What is this message?”

“You’re to meet direct in the alley behind the amphitheater.”

Ram’s spirits lifted. If he met Arnoux now he would still have time to fight in the final bout. He reached for his coat. “With whom am I to meet?”

“The pretty blonde lady.”

Ram whirled around. “Miss Nash?”

The boy’s face cleared. “Aye. That’s her. Miss Nash. Right proper eyeful, eh, guv?”

Ram wasn’t listening. He’d already brushed by the boy and Figburt and disappeared into the outer hall. Lord Figburt and the urchin eyed each other a second before simultaneously shrugging.

“Women’ll do that to you,” the lad said in patent disgust. “Hope he keeps a weather eye on the time, though that ain’t likely.”

“How’s that?” Figburt asked.

“When me pa gets that look in his eye, he’s like to spend all night out with his doxy, and milord is got a duel to fight shortly, don’t he?”

“Yes,” Lord Figburt said, his gaze falling on the sword Ramsey had left behind. “Yes. He does.”

Making a sudden decision, he picked it up and headed after his hero.

“Where you going?” the boy asked curiously.

“To make sure England’s victory is assured.”

The boy watched him go, shrugged, took out the jar of ointment the other gentleman had given him, and went to work.

“I thought you were different. A lady. And you were. My lady.” DeMarc’s voice echoed down the alley. Ram slowed, fear tightening in a fist around his gut as he slipped forward amidst the shadows. “We were happy together, weren’t we? Weren’t we?”

“Yes, milord.” He closed his eyes, cursing inwardly as his fears were all realized. It was Helena. She sounded calm, but her breathing was rapid, nervous.