The Christmas Spirit (7 page)

Feeling guilty for perhaps the first time in her life, Trudy saw that Matthew's eyes had narrowed, as if the evidence of her crime could be read on her face. She recovered and treated him to her most bewitching glance and was relieved to see him blink.

Pulling his gaze from her as if by force, Matthew shifted awkwardly on his bench, and Trudy dared to hope that a fleeting thought of ravishment had crossed his mind. Francis had been right when he'd said that Matthew would be a tough nut to crack. Any other man would have done his best to capture her after one of her saucy glances.

"Are you certain you are quite comfortable?" she probed, perversely determined to get confirmation of her hopes.

A grin quirked his mouth, but "Quite," was all he said.

"Tell me," he added, once they had gone a few more blocks, and his mood had become pensive. "Why do I get the feeling that Mr. Waite scarcely knows you?"

Trudy's heart dove into her stomach again. The vexing man! Did he notice everything?        With a genuine sigh, she tried to explain his suspicions away. "Mr. Waite is a worthy individual in many ways, but I fear my free-thinking manner shocks him. Perhaps you noticed that he seemed almost afraid of me. I fear my independence is quite beyond his experience of females."

"As it is of mine. Not that I censure you for it. But I cannot help wondering how it came about."

"Oh, that is quite easy." Her words, when she produced them, had more than a hint of truth. "My parents both died very young."
For elves.
Though both would have been considered ancient by human standards.

"And have you no brothers or sisters?"

Trudy hesitated, but this telling the truth was addicting. "I have one brother, but we do not live together."

Seeing that some elaboration was needed, she continued, "My brother prefers the country. He is not fond of human company, whereas I--"

"Whereas, you devote yourself to worthy causes?"

"Yes."

"Which suggests that you control your own fortune."

She searched for the
mot juste.
"Let us simply say that I have resources under my own governance and may do as I please with them."

"What does your brother have to say about these activities--calling on strange gentlemen, walking the streets without an escort?"

Trudy gave an impish shrug, accompanied by a laugh. "I fear he knows very little about them, though he would undoubtedly disapprove. He's very stuffy."

"Stranger and stranger still. And have you no thought to your own danger?"

"No." Trudy drew herself up and folded her hands in her lap with a smile of the purest satisfaction. "I am entirely fearless."

Matthew's brows arched, and he slowly pulled back in his seat as if he did not quite know what to make of such a remark. Trudy feared that she might have given him reason for disgust. She had been carried away by the freedom that comes from telling the truth, but truth was a sticky business, one she had better have more care to.

"Have I shocked you, Sir Matthew?" Anxiety tightened around her heart. They had made two rounds of the park now, and she feared their ride would soon be over, and she wondered whether he would ever want to see her again. She could always appear to him at night and try to engineer his desires, but she had far rather the idea come from him.

"No." He relaxed his challenged posture. "I simply have never met a woman quite like you, with the exception, perhaps, of one African princess, the wife of a vizier."

"Was she beautiful?" Trudy didn't know where the question had come from.

"Yes. Very beautiful. And intelligent, too, which is much more important. She saved my life more than once with her advice and intervention."

"Did you love her?"

"Completely, but not in the way you mean. My feelings were greatly tinged by respect and a healthy dose of fear for the power she wielded."

"Oh." Trudy sighed, inexplicably relieved. "Then, what you felt, Sir Matthew, was not love. It was awe."

A glint of respect lit his eyes. "You understand the situation perfectly, which in itself is curious. How a lady of your age, who acts for all the world as if she's never ridden in a carriage before, can be so wise is more than a bit mysterious."

"I wasn't acting as if I'd never been in a carriage before-- Was I?"

Matthew felt a laugh burst from him. Her indignation, followed so closely by doubt, enchanted him. "Forgive me," he said, with exaggerated politeness. "I must have been gravely mistaken."

But the smile that had visited his lips lingered in his chest. It felt strange after so many months of bitterness, but he could almost feel the strength of his amusement in his blood. Never before had he met a female with so many contradictions, all delightful.

Faye was daintily built and as a fresh of face as a wood nymph, yet she showed the same confidence in her cause as a battle-hardened general. She could not be more feminine or graceful, yet she acted with the sweeping freedom of a man. If she had one fault, it would appear to be conceit, for he'd often heard a certain smugness in her tone. Yet, her version of conceit had none of the viciousness displayed by petty women. It seemed so much a part of her, he could not even fault her for a weakness he usually despised.

But--Matthew felt the pain from old wounds urging him to caution--he did not really know her or know who she was. She'd appeared on his doorstep without so much as a letter of introduction, and had gained entry with the use of artifice. Even today, there had been times when he had sensed she was not being truthful. She plainly would have preferred to evade his questions, and her nervous glances had given her away more surely than her otherwise polished answers.

Her entire appearance and her performance were so perfect, in fact, as to seem ephemeral. Where her charm and her rare beauty might have tempted him to pursue her, were he a healthy man with glowing prospects, there was something about her very perfection that gave him pause. Strangely, it was those very moments of doubt and unease that had made her more real and all the more appealing.

He did not want to expose himself to a woman without principle again. Faye might still be a fortune-hunter. He was not a wealthy man, but his modest estate was enough to maintain him in a certain comfort for the rest of his life. He was not such a fool that he did not perceive how attractive such a life would be to a woman who needed it.

He shook himself from these dangerous musings, asking abruptly, "Why did you call on me, Faye?"

She looked startled. "I have already told you, and now shown you, that our charity was in need--"

"No, you misunderstood me. I was asking, why
me?"

Her eyes widened. Where once he had thought them green, they now appeared a deep, brooding violet. But after he pressed his eyes closed and felt fatigue sweeping suddenly through him, he discovered they were green again. His fever must be returning.

Fighting to keep this knowledge from her, ashamed to be betrayed by his own weakness, he sat as still as possible. But a softening of her face told him she had noticed that all was not well.

"I had hoped," she began, "to persuade you to approach your friends on behalf of my society."

"Friends?" Matthew knew that harshness had sprung into his voice. "Whomever can you mean?"

Faye blinked. "The African Association? Are they not the group that sent you on your expedition? I had hoped they would take a particular interest in our almshouse."

Matthew fought the gripping fury that name always evoked, leaving shakiness in its wake. At once, he knew he had overtaxed his ravaged body today.

"I am afraid," he said, with a terrible stillness, "you have been grossly deceived. I have lost whatever influence I once wielded with that group."

Faye's eyes grew round with dismay. He could almost see her cringing from the despair on his face. Matthew averted his glance, pinching his brow to spare her the sight.

"Surely that cannot be true," she ventured after an interminable pause.

"I'm quite afraid that it is. But it's a long story, one I will not bore you with."

Concern and restrained curiosity played across her face, but he would not give in to them. He had already revealed too much. Let her hear from others how seriously he had been discredited, he thought.

Then, all at once, a radical change came over her demeanor. A militant gleam lit her eyes.

"If you have lost your former friends," she said with a mischievous dimple in each cheek, "that is all the more reason to introduce them to me."

"What?" Matthew gave an incredulous bark of laughter.

"I said, it would be better to let me speak to them."

"Oh?" He studied her. Something in her look made him wish to hear more. "To say what precisely?"

"Oh--" that smug little chin of hers was in the air again--"nothing in particular. But," she added with a wink, "I assure you I have my ways of dealing with foolish men."

Sir Joseph Banks, a fool?
Some of the profoundest minds of their day, mere foolish men? Matthew wanted to break into laughter. But, he realized with a start, any such outburst from him would be of pure exhilaration, untinged by spite. When he puzzled over his reaction, the explanation immediately came: Faye believed in him.

She had not asked what he had done to lose the respect of such an august body. She gave no sign of believing his ostracism was merited. Without a blink or a justification from him, she had taken his side.

Such blind acceptance had given him the greatest lift he'd had since he'd begun to believe he would make it home alive from his last expedition. And that former rush had lasted so brief a time. Just long enough for him to return home to find his reputation ruined and his fiancée married to someone else.

The immensity of that disappointment, the dashing of his fondest dreams, should have made him cautious now; but he found that, despite the extreme exhaustion that threatened to overtake him, he did not want to give up this one spark of hope. It might be mad in the extreme--it most assuredly was--but something inside him very much wanted to see what Faye could accomplish with those men.

They might think him a liar, a coward, and a scoundrel, but at least they would see he had very good taste and the support of one very charming person--which was just what his vanity needed. They were all gentlemen. There was no possibility that they would treat her with rudeness, especially not with her pretty face.

Glancing at Faye now, and feeling the immense pull of her charm, Matthew could almost feel pity for those men. They were extremely competitive. He could practically see them elbowing each other out of the way for a chance to make fools of themselves.

"Very well," he said, before fatigue and reason could make him change his mind. "I can take you to their next dinner meeting, which should be this Saturday. But I must warn you, the governing committee meets in a tavern in Pall Mall. Are you certain you wish to appear?"

"Absolutely," she said, and he could not doubt it. "As soon as you determine for certain what time we should go, you must drop me a note at this address." She reached into her reticule for a card and handed it to him.

Like the first, it was engraved in gold. Not the usual fancy of a fortune-hunter. Matthew felt absurdly relieved by this proof that she was what she pretended to be.

The card gave an address in Meadows Lane. "I have not driven much in London this past year, and before that, I was traveling. Where is Meadows Lane?" he asked. "I do not recall the name."

"It is not far from the park. I shall send you directions.

"And, now," she said, changing the subject abruptly, "I greatly fear that I must get on with my errands. If you would be so kind as to drop me in Bond Street?"

Matthew gave his driver the word, and they had soon pulled over in front of a millinery Faye had pointed out. At the end of his weakened resources for the day, Matthew did not argue when she insisted she would find her way home. He only prayed he would not regret the rash impulse that had led him to accept her mad proposal.

Chapter Five

The next few days were restless ones for Matthew. Instead of sending him back to his bed, the outing had made him eager for more activity. Nothing was harder for a man of his enterprise than to sit idle, once a fire had been lit inside him. And, suddenly, one burned.        Ambition, which had always been at the crux of his character, had sprung back to life with the thought of facing his accusers with an ally by his side. Not the same dark ambition which had driven him into Africa, but one that was much more fundamental: the desire to restore his reputation in the eyes of his peers.

True, Ahmad had always been his willing supporter. But, no matter how enlightened the patrons of the African Association were, they were still Englishmen, and full of bias. To them, Ahmad was nothing more than a specimen of his race. A particularly fine one, but merely an object for study, certainly not a man whose opinion they would consult. After all, he had not been properly brought up, nor had he attended the proper English university. So how could he be believed?

The narrow minds of Matthew's colleagues made Faye's liberality seem all the more remarkable. That her girl's mind should hold more wisdom than all those learned brains put together confounded him; but her belief in him somehow meant more to him even than Ahmad's steadfast friendship. And Matthew was not so foolish as to think it was because Faye was merely one of his own kind.

Discovering within himself a distinct impatience to see her again, he sent her a note, informing her of the time of the association's next meeting and asking where he should call to take her up. Her response arrived on Saturday when he and Ahmad were passing through the plain entryway of their apartments in the wake of their afternoon meal. Matthew slit open the seal of her missive, doing his best to conceal his eagerness.

However, when he read Faye's reply, excusing her from riding with him on the grounds that she had another engagement earlier that evening, fresh doubts made his heart sink. She would have to meet him at the tavern to arrive by the designated hour. Matthew could not help wondering whether she would appear at all.