Some Enchanted Evening (4 page)

"Do be careful," Clarice said with relish. "He doesn't like men."

Offering his hand to the stallion, Lord Hepburn stood perfectly still as the horse sniffed his fingers, his arm, his shoulder, and then nuzzled his ear. Lord Hepburn caressed the soft nose of her stallion. "I think we'll get along."

Fie on the horse! He gentled only for women — and most women were afraid to go near him. Now this man who reeked of nobility, cynicism, and an indefinable masculinity held Blaize by the reins and petted him as if he were a tame dog, when in fact Blaize was — Clarice ran her finger under the tight collar of her riding costume. Seeing the way Hepburn watched her, she hastily pulled her hand away. She would not behave as if she were guilty. She wasn't guilty of anything. Not here. Not yet. "Thank you, my lord. You're very kind."

Clarice walked toward the seamstress's shop. She turned back before she had gone ten steps. "His name is Blaize. Treat him well." She looked Lord Hepburn in the eye, demanding his consideration. "He has been abused, and he is my friend."

Lord Hepburn bowed before her demand. "Of course." His attention lingered on Clarice's hips as she hurried away. She moved with a lithe grace that held his gaze. He glanced around the square. Held the gaze of every man there. She sold the women face cream. With her bold words and small, curvaceous body, she sold the men something else entirely.

Happiness, she had said.

Perhaps, just perhaps, he was in the market to pay.

Chapter Four

Never lower yourself to dishonesty, regardless of the circumstances. Such behavior besmirches the shining white character of royalty and the Fleur family.

— The Dowager Queen of Beaumontagne

"Yer Highness." Mistress Dubb had lingered close enough to hear the exchange. Hurrying forward, she curtsied. "Yer presence will honor my humble shop." She shot a triumphant glance at the other women.

Clarice gave a silent groan. She knew this woman's type. Mistress Dubb would tell the story of the princess in her shop until the other women were ready to roast the seamstress on a spit. And Clarice needed to speak to Miss Rosabel alone. But there was no helping it; she had to show Mistress Dubb the proper courtesy. To fail would be discourteous . . . and eventually bad for sales. "I thank you for your kindness, to me and to Amy."

Mistress Dubb simpered, curtsied again, and opened the narrow green door. A variety of hats were set in the small window, all as dull and lusterless as everything in this village.

"You're a milliner also!" Clarice exclaimed. "How talented you are."

"I do me best, Yer Highness." She flung the door wide and bobbed up and down as Clarice entered.

In the dim interior of the shop Miss Rosabel stood by the mirror, smoothing the last of the clay off her nose and chin.

Clarice blocked the entrance. "Turquoise is the newest fashion color in
London
. But you knew that, of course." Clarice lavished a smile on the seamstress as she picked the one color most likely to complement any complexion. "I imagine you're working on hats and gowns of that color right now."

Mistress Dubb took a breath. "Aye. Aye! In the back."

"I'll be doing a private consultation with Miss Rosabel now." Gently she pushed Mistress Dubb away. "Of course, you'll have your turn later. I'm sure you understand." She shut the door on Mistress Dubb's blossoming smile.

"That was skillful." Miss Rosabel stepped out of the shadows. "The old biddy will brag about your kindness for a fortnight."

Her hostility was palpable, her tone scornful, for Miss Rosabel was, in fact, Clarice's younger sister, seventeen years of age. She was Princess Amy of Beaumontagne.

Before she answered, Clarice switched to German. Changing languages as they spoke was something she and Amy did frequently — it kept their linguistic skill thriving and befuddled anyone who might be listening. "I
am
a princess, and I
do
try to be kind."

Amy's exasperated adolescent sigh said too clearly that she found Clarice dim-witted and conventional. "Yes, yes, we're both princesses. Princesses of Beaumontagne." With a jerky motion Amy wiped at the white powder on her face. "Sisters bound by a royal bloodline, trapped together in exile. According to you, that justifies everything."

Bustling forward, Clarice tried to take the towel. "Here. Let me."

Amy jerked away from Clarice, from her touch, and said fiercely, "I can do it. I've done it often enough before."

Clarice's heart sank. The longer they peddled their wares, the more unhappy Amy became.

Clarice wandered about the shop, examining the gowns laid out to be sewn, while Amy completed her transformation from a dull, plain seamstress recently come to town to a girl hovering on the edge of prettiness. After a few more sessions with Clarice, she would be beautiful, a living testimonial to the royal face cream. And when the time came for Clarice to leave, Amy would slip out of town in her wake.

When Amy finished, she leaned her fists on either side of the mirror and closed her eyes. Her voice vibrated with fury as she demanded, "What do you think you're doing?"

Clarice winced but said brightly, "It went well, didn't it?"

"No, it did not!" Freed of the constraints of the public eye, Amy allowed her ferocity free rein. "When I wrote you, I warned you this was not the place to do our act. But you always think you know best."

Clarice changed to French. "We were out of money and we didn't have time to find another town."

"We could both work as seamstresses." Amy's gaze met Clarice's in the mirror. A silver necklace glinted at her throat. A necklace with a cross that matched Clarice's. "We could settle down somewhere and design clothes. I'm good at it. I wouldn't have to pretend to be ugly. We wouldn't have to keep moving from one place to another."

Slowly Clarice shook her head.

"Oh. I forgot. We're
princesses
." Amy almost spat out the words. "Princesses don't do
menial
work like
sewing"

"No." Clarice watched her younger sister and wished things could be different. She wanted Amy to be happy, to hold the position of honor she was born to hold. But Amy had been so young when they left Beaumontagne. She'd been only ten. At fourteen Clarice had been the second oldest, and she well remembered the protocol and the luxury, the duties and the joys. She missed it, but more than that, she wanted Amy to know what it really was to be a princess, to enjoy the privileges and treasure the duties.

"Are princesses supposed to sell people products that don't work?" Amy demanded.

Patiently Clarice repeated what she'd said so many times before. "We tried being seamstresses. We could barely make enough money to feed ourselves. We have to locate Sorcha, and together we have to make our way back to Beaumontagne and find Grandmamma."

With a brutality she'd never shown before, Amy said, "She's dead. You know she is. Father and Grandmamma didn't mean for us to be on the streets. Sorcha is lost."

Amy had spoken aloud Clarice's deepest fears, and the pain of those words made Clarice's breath rasp in her throat. "Papa's dead. We know that. Godfrey said so, and so did the papers in
London
. But the papers said Grandmamma is back in power."

"And Godfrey said that Grandmamma instructed that we should not come back until she sent for us. He said there were bad people hunting us, and that we should hide until she placed an announcement in all the papers that it was safe to return." Amy's quavering voice recalled the fear of that time, when Grandmamma's favorite messenger had arrived at the school and sent Clarice and Amy fleeing while he took Crown Princess Sorcha to a secret sanctuary. "There hasn't been an announcement. We check every paper in every town, and you know Grandmamma. If she said she would put in an announcement, she would."

"I know. I know." If there was one thing both girls comprehended, it was that their grandmother was a force of nature.

"I tell you, everyone's dead, the bad people have won, and we can't go back."

"We don't know that. Sorcha could already be there, waiting for us. I promise you'll love it. The palace is so beautiful, and you'll have the finest gowns and a beautiful pianoforte to play. . . ." Clarice's voice wobbled as she fought back tears,

"Dear Clarice." Amy came to her at once and put her arms around her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I only wish we could stop selling ourselves like cheap —"

Clarice put her fingers over Amy's mouth. "We're not selling
ourselves
. We're selling the creams Grandmamma showed me how to make. And the creams really are royal, and they
are
wonderful for the complexion, and —"

"And they really don't make anyone beautiful. If they did, I wouldn't have to go into town a fortnight ahead of you, wearing a fake nose and white powder."

"But for a little while they give the women hope. That's not so bad, is it?" Clarice cajoled.

Glumly Amy replied, "Those people in
England
who want to hang you from the highest gibbet think so."

"It was that awful man." Clarice set her chin. "That magistrate."

Now Amy's ashen complexion owed nothing to white powder and everything to fear. She lowered her voice as if afraid of being overheard, and in Italian said, "He wanted you."

"I know." Clarice walked a fine line. The wives wanted her creams, but the husbands held the purse strings, so Clarice had to be pleasant and charming to everyone, and at the same time never go over the invisible line that separated the lady from the fallen woman.

Sometimes the men didn't see the line. Frequently they saw only an attractive young female living without the protection of a man. That made her easy prey — and Magistrate Fairfoot had more than one reason for wanting her dead. She had hurt his pride in every way possible, and even now, in her nightmares, she could see the gray towers of the fortress at Gilmichael clawing the bloodred sky, waiting to swallow her whole and never, ever let her out.

"Now you have another awful man after you," Amy said.

"Is he awful?" Hepburn didn't seem awful. In a way, that was almost worse.

"They're all awful." Amy caught Clarice by the lapels of her jacket and lowered her voice to an intense whisper. "What are you going to do about him?"

"I don't know. I don't know." Clarice whispered too. "I thought from your letter he was older. Much older. He sounded so grim."

"He
is
grim." With a glance at the door Amy said, "They claim Hepburn is a fair man, but he quarreled with his father and the old earl bought him a commission and forced him to go to war. Six years later his father died. Lord Hepburn sold his commission and came back, but the townsfolk whisper that he's changed."

"Changed how?"

"He used to be a young man, devil-may-care, enjoying a fight, drinking the night away, always laughing. Now . . . now he's as you saw. The people in the town admire him — but when they speak of him, there's an edge of fear in their voices."

Yes. It was that Clarice had sensed. He was a man of privilege, and yet he hid secrets in his soul. Secrets that made them alike.

She didn't want to recognize him and his mysteries.

As if she read Clarice's thoughts, Amy said, "Be careful."

Clarice spoke too quickly. "Why?"

"He won't stay in the manor with the family."

"Really?" That floored Clarice. She would have said he made much of his home and his place there. "Where does he stay?"

"In one of the cottages on the estate. He comes in for breakfast and he seems natural, but they say he walks the estate and the district at night like a man haunted, and he disappears for days at a time." Amy lowered her voice as if her own tale made her uneasy. "They say the war turned him a little mad."

"Oh, pshaw. Surely not mad!"

"Yes. Mad. And dangerous. Did you see the way he watched you?" Amy whispered.

With a fair imitation of insouciance, Clarice shrugged. "They all watch me."

"Not like that. He's too . . . he's confident." Amy observed Clarice with a wisdom beyond her years. A wisdom won from hard years on the road and too much innocence betrayed. "He wants — and he gets what he wants."

Clarice knew what Amy meant. After all, hadn't he kissed her hand almost before she knew his name? But just because he had soft lips and a lover's swift tongue was no reason to admit her wariness. Amy had already expressed her uneasiness about the job, and if she knew of Clarice's anxieties, she would push for them to leave. Clarice had lost too much on their last job; having to abandon the town in a hurry had made it impossible to collect the money due them.

At times like this, when disaster loomed on every side, Clarice could scarcely recall when she had lived in a palace, when she had been pampered and cared for, when all she knew of the world was what Grandmamma told her. Right now, Clarice wished nothing so much as to return to the palace in Beaumontagne and be that spoiled princess once more.

Foolishness. In the last five years, Clarice had learned well what wishes were worth. So she said, "It's best to be forewarned, so — tell me everything you know about the mad and dangerous Lord Hepburn."