St. Raven (43 page)

But when he arrived at her house in Otley Street the knocker was off the door. When his thundering brought a servant, he was told that the Mandevilles had left town over an hour ago, that their lease of the house was over.

Tris stood in front of the house, stunned and furious. “He sent that letter as they drove away. She can’t have been told!”

He moved toward the curricle, but Cary grasped his arm. “Why would he withhold it?”

“He wants her to go to India. He’s a selfish brute. He’s not going to get away with this.” Tris ripped free and climbed into the curricle and set the horses off at a race toward the Newington Gate.

Cary stood in the road and cursed, then turned to run to the nearest stables where he could hire a horse.

The sight of a curricle overtaking them was not a huge shock to Cressida. She’d prepared for the journey in a white-hot frenzy, but once in the coach she’d had nothing to do but think.

Tris would follow. Sitting as she was with her back to the horses, she saw him coming, riding the light carriage in a way that was painfully familiar, his prime horses eating the ground.

She should have written the letter herself. He might have accepted it then. She had written a stern note to Sir Roger Tiverton and he was nowhere to be seen.

The coach drew up.

“What?” said her father, looking up from a book.

“It must be an accident,” said her mother, peering out.

“It’s St. Raven,” Cressida said.

Her parents looked at her, and she saw that neither of them were surprised, that they perhaps thought her rejection foolish, that she’d come to her senses.

“He’d make a terrible husband!” she exclaimed.

He swung open the door, all fire and icy dignity. “Miss Mandeville, may I have a moment of your time?”

She swallowed through a painfully tight throat, but climbed out of the coach without taking his outstretched hand. He flushed and stepped back.

His curricle sat at an angle across the road, blocking the coach. Their groom had control of his steaming horses. Behind, their luggage coach was drawing up, the servants peering out, goggle-eyed. The road was quiet at the moment, but another vehicle could come by at any time and wonder. People might stop to ask if they could help.

More gossip.

She couldn’t bear it.

She walked six paces away from the coach and spoke quickly. “You probably think my father didn’t show me your letter, Your Grace, or something equally extreme. He did. And though I am suitably aware of the honor you pay me, I regret that I could never become your wife.”

His face had been set, but now it turned white. “Why?”

“I thought gentlemen were never supposed to ask that.”

“Probably, but I’m a duke. Explain. I… had the strong impression that you felt a connection to me, Miss Mandeville.”

The emotions beating out of him reminded her of their first encounter, of her terror. She was surely safe now.

She looked away from him, across peaceful, golden fields. A reasonable crop here, while in many areas the poor summer meant a thin harvest. “I do not deny your many virtues, Your Grace—”

“Yes, you do, but I am willing to improve.”

“I mean, I do not deny your many qualities, but our characters are not harmonious.” She looked back, begging him to understand. “It seems impossible that I might hurt you, but I think I am. It will only sting for a little while, but if we marry the pain will be for life! You are following a whim. You are used to having what you want, and right now you want me. Good Lord, it’s the challenge, isn’t it? My running away only added to that. But if we were to marry, that would all end, don’t you see? I’ll bore you”—she swept on over a protest—“and you’ll turn back to a more exciting life, and I will
not
smile sweetly over it.”

She spread her hands. “You’ll turn me into a shrew, and I’ll turn you into a monstrous husband, and I never wanted to be a duchess. You can find a better wife than I.”

He seemed puzzled as much as anything. “You really don’t think much of me, do you?”

Her whole face ached with stopped-up tears. “I said you had many qualities.”

“But no virtues.”

“That was you, not me.”

She saw him suck in a breath. “Cressida, I can be the man you want me to be. This is more than some whim, dammit!”

“Don’t swear at me!”

“Once you didn’t care.”

She looked around, alarmed that someone might hear. “That was a brief madness. It was not me. It was not you.”

“I love you. I told you that before, and I haven’t changed.”

She met his eyes. “Precisely.”

They hung in frozen silence, his eyes dark. She felt the beat of his violent will, but this time he surely couldn’t seize her, carry her off from amid her family and servants—

The pounding wasn’t only her heart.

Hooves.

A rider charged up, leaped off his horse.

Mr. Lyne, hatless, disordered. He looked between them, then bowed. “Miss Mandeville.”

“Late as usual, Cary,” said Tris, in a tone both light and ice. “Miss Mandeville has finally convinced me that there was no misunderstanding.” He stepped back and bowed, fully. “Bon voyage.”

With that he turned on his heel and strode back to his curricle, climbed in, and drove off at speed.

Cressida watched him go, fighting not to cry.

“If he said anything to offend, Miss Mandeville, you must excuse him. He really does care.”

She could not get into an argument with this man, too. “I hope you will follow, Mr. Lyne. He drives well, but…”

His expression was rueful and kind. “Don’t worry. I’ll pick up the pieces. Bon voyage, Miss Mandeville, but I hope you are very sure of your proper destination.”

He swung into the saddle and rode off. After a moment, she turned and climbed back into the coach.

Her mother was biting her lower lip and looking upset. Her father looked put out.

Cressida jolted as the coach moved off again. “If you wanted me to marry the duke, you might have told me. I could have saved you both some distress. But that should be an end of it.”

“That’s for sure,” her father grunted. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

“ ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin,’” she quoted, “ ‘or the leopard his spots?’ ”

Her father snorted and returned to his book; her mother sighed and returned to her knitting.

To herself, for strength, Cressida recited the rest of that passage from Jeremiah. “…
I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations
…”

One day she would look back on this and know it was right.

Cary came up with Tris walking his horses in the approach to Camberley. “Are we for the Mount, then?”

“Of course. There’s a masquerade to prepare for.”

Cary bit the inside of his cheek. This was not the moment to argue about Miss Swinamer. Give Tris a day or two to cool off.

In Camberley he arranged to return his horse to the livery in London, and sent a message requesting both his and Tris’s belongings be sent down to Mount St. Raven.

He didn’t have long. Once a change of horses was in place, Tris was ready to be off. He didn’t have to explain that he wanted to be well ahead of the Mandevilles.

Which was as well, as he said not a word in the five hours it took to reach Amesbury, which was certainly beyond any possible stopping place of Cressida Mandeville and her family.

Breaking with his custom, Tris commanded two separate bedrooms, went into his, and shut the door. The innkeeper, a kindly-looking woman, said, “What will His Grace want for dinner?”

“If he wants to eat, he’ll tell you. As for me,” Cary said with a smile, “spread the best table you can, Mrs. Wheeling. I’m empty as a dry sack. And I’ll have a flagon of ale to be going on with.”

He went into his room and collapsed into a chair, leaning back to think, though it didn’t help. Miss Mandeville was not playing coy games. She didn’t want to marry St. Raven, and it wasn’t altogether surprising. He wasn’t an easy person, they had little in common, and being a duke or a duchess was the very devil unless you had a taste for playing God.

All the same, at heart, Tris Tregallows was one of the best men Cary knew, and he deserved a good wife and a chance at a happy life.

Broken hearts did not precisely mend, but they grew scar tissue. In the six leisurely days it took to reach Plymouth, Cressida achieved a certain peace with her destiny. Perhaps close observance of her parents helped.

Her father was like Tris in so many ways, even if his weakness was adventure through travel rather than through wild indulgence. The sparkle in his eye, his anticipation and enthusiasm for the future, were all new to Cressida.

With Tris it had been the reverse. She’d first met the real man. The social gentleman was the incomplete version, a part he played because he must.

Over days of thought she decided that St. Raven had assumed that she was like him, that the woman she’d been at first was the real one, the propriety an act. Yes, she’d thrilled for a while in her exploration of the wild places, but in the end she’d been desperate to return home—to ordinary ways and propriety. She had absolutely no desire to return to rakes and orgies.

What’s more, she was not like her mother. Since learning why her mother had left India, Cressida had tried to understand, but in the end she was defeated. Her mother seemed to have a blessed ability to be content with her fate, whatever it might be. Admirable, but perhaps overcompliant.

She had learned that her parents’ marriage had been one of fondness rather than passion, so perhaps it hadn’t been hard for Louisa to leave her husband. Cressida’s mother claimed to have enjoyed the venture to India, but also not to have suffered over the decision to return home.

“Your health was the most important thing,” she said as if that explained all, “and I knew your father could manage without me.”

“But didn’t you think of joining him at some time?”

“Perhaps when you’d married.”

It was said without reproach, but Cressida felt guilt again over her carelessness. She could have married years ago if she’d known.

Cressida couldn’t cling to the idea that her mother was being dragged abroad against her will. When not knitting, she was reading books about India and having her husband teach her useful phrases. Cressida dutifully learned phrases, too, but when she caught sight of the ships in Plymouth harbor, it was only the thought of having to face the Duke of St. Raven again that prevented her from backing out.

The King’s Arms was a comfortable hostelry, and they had a spacious suite of rooms. Their ship, the
Sally Rose
, was already in port, carrying their possessions from London as well as goods her father had purchased for trade. Her father busied himself with checking it all and loading up yet more. Her mother bustled about, buying comforts and necessities for the journey.

Cressida could have done her part, but she spent her time in long walks. It wasn’t exactly wise since it gave her too much time to think, but she reasoned that she had only so much longing in her, and the quicker she worked through it, the quicker it would be gone.

Longing for England as well as for a man. Or for one face of a many-faceted man…

Then one day, as she walked back toward the inn, she saw a familiar figure approaching. Her heart halted for a moment, but then she realized that it was not Tris, but his French cousin.

“Monsieur Bourreau,” she said in French.

He bowed. “Miss Mandeville.”

“What on earth are you doing in Plymouth?”

“So close to the ends of the earth, is it not? But I am on my way back from Mount St. Raven, where I took farewell of my cousin.”

Was she supposed to ask how he was? She waited in silence.

He was carrying a small, leather-bound notebook and opened it. If it was another letter from Tris, she was going to scream.

It was not a notebook, but a kind of portfolio. He took out a sheet and offered it. “For you, Miss Mandeville.”

One glance showed her Tris, brilliantly executed in pencil, lounging, a glass of something in his hand, in disorder, shirt open at the neck.

“Why would you think I would want that?”

“Ah! Almost exactly his words when I offered him its partner. Interesting, is it not?”

She gave him an icy look. “When offered an unwanted item, what else is a person to say? It would seem that you are meddling in matters that have nothing to do with you, Mr. Bourreau.”

She walked on, but he kept pace.

“Am I? Miss Mandeville, I came to England bent on revenge, and on squeezing as much as possible out of the wicked Duke of St. Raven. But alas, I discover a friend. More than a friend, one who could be a brother if circumstances were different. We must part. We will likely not see a great deal of each other. But I cannot be uninvolved. I have discovered my lovely Miranda. I wish no less for my cousin.”

This was startling enough to make Cressida stop and stare. “Do you mean Miranda Coop?”

“Exactly!” he said with a brilliant smile. “A queen among women. In France, she will become my wife, and respectable. Perhaps one day you will be able to visit our house in perfect propriety.”

“You forget. I am about to sail for India.”

He looked out at the forest of masts. “Ah yes. India. Do you truly think you can be happy there?”

“I am willing to try.”

“But not to try other adventures? What if I tell you that St. Raven is most unhappy?”

“I will be full of regrets, sir, but without power to assist him.”

“And if I tell you that tonight at a masquerade ball he will ask the icy Miss Swinamer to be his duchess? Not his wife. She is, in my opinion, unable to be his wife. His friend Cary and I talk. We decide that it must not be. I come here.”

He whipped out another picture and held it before her.

Phoebe Swinamer, to the inch. The beauty might think it an excellent portrayal, for it captured all her fine looks and even a slight smile. But in some subtle way it also captured her complete lack of heart. A china doll would have more feeling for the world beyond her own selfish interests.