The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (14 page)

“You’d need a parrot for that,” said Gwen, “or at least an eye patch.” But she called for the maid all the same.

The maid bobbed a curtsy as she departed. “Thank you for your custom, Mrs. Fustian. Colonel Fustian.”

William slanted Gwen a glance from under his brows. “Fustian?”

Gwen certainly wasn’t going to tell him that it was her usual alias. She gave him a superior look. “It seemed appropriate for someone who speaks so much nonsense as you.”

William laughed, a great rolling laugh that came from deep in his chest. “I’ve never met anyone who manages to call me to account as you do.”

Gwen wasn’t sure if that was intended as a compliment. “That,” she said, “is because you bamboozle them all with your flummery.”

He looked down at her, his eyes a clear, bright blue. “It’s not all flummery.”

Gwen’s treacherous stomach fluttered. “That is exactly the sort of thing I mean,” she said sternly. “Don’t think you can get around me that way.”

“I would never be so foolish,” he said solemnly. “Particularly not while you’re holding a blade.”

They cleared their meager possessions from the room. The tumbled sheets on the bed told a false tale. Gwen took one last look out the window from which she had seen so many sunrises and sunsets. For five days, she had left the room only to summon the maid, to procure food, to demand hot water or cold ale. For five days she had kept vigil over the man beside her, sitting in that chair, lighting and snuffing those candles, cursing the blasted recalcitrant chimney. It felt as though it had been a year, not a mere week, less than a week.

It had been one thing to nurse him, but now that he was clothed again, now that he was on his feet, she didn’t quite know what to do with him. His clean-shaven face seemed unfamiliar, bare and shiny.

Once on the stage, it was too crowded to speak privately, or to speak at all, so they sat silently, wedged into a corner of the backwards-facing seat. With every jolt and jostle, the Colonel turned a little bit more gray in the face, his smile a little more strained. He was the Colonel again, Gwen realized. Not William anymore. This clean-faced stranger was the man she had met at Miss Climpson’s, not the man she had nursed through a grueling bout of wound fever.

And she was Miss Meadows again, armored in respectability. There would be no more fever-stricken kisses, no waking to an arm around her waist.

She ought to be glad of that. That had been a detour, an aberration. They would return to Bath, find the girls, and she could return to her life in France, a life—she reminded herself—that she had chosen for herself, a life of infinite possibility and power.

A life of being Miss Wooliston’s fearsome chaperone.

Despite his obvious weakness, the Colonel insisted on walking her to the Woolistons’ hired house in Laura Place.

They stood before the front steps, the Colonel’s hat in his hand, Gwen’s parasol dangling from her wrist, neither of them at all sure what to say to the other.

What did one say to a man to whom one had been pretend married not six hours before?

Gwen could see the drapes twitch, the butler waiting for her to mount the steps so he could open the door and take her rather battered hat and parasol. There had been a butler who had come with the house. He had been in residence when they arrived. The following day, he had received an unexpected bequest from an unknown cousin and gone off to take a holiday of his own at the spa at Tunbridge Wells.

Jane took no chances. The new butler was one of their own. He would give her all the time she needed.

What, exactly, she needed that time for was another question entirely.

“Well,” said Gwen. “That was certainly an enlivening episode.” When in doubt, resort to sarcasm.

The Colonel’s wide smile lit his face. Fifty-four and the man still had freckles. They lent him an entirely deceptive air of boyishness.

“From where I was lying, I’m not sure ‘enlivening’ is the word I would choose.” To Gwen’s surprise, he possessed himself of both her hands, the laughter gone from his blue eyes. “I don’t know how to thank you. You might have left me at that inn, but you didn’t. For that, I shall always be grateful.”

Gratitude was a weak substitute for any form of true emotion. She would rather have scorn than gratitude. “Reserve your gratitude, sir. It was no more than anyone might have done.”

“Perhaps. But there aren’t many I would trust to guard my back. May I”—William paused, clasping and unclasping his hands—“call on you tomorrow?”

There was no reason for her to feel like a girl at a country assembly being asked for her first dance. He had made himself clear. His interest in her was purely that of a comrade at arms.

“I had assumed you would. We still have two young ladies to find, after all.” Gwen turned and stalked up the stairs, pausing on the top step to add, “Don’t get yourself skewered again in the meantime.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” he said, and then ruined all her composure by adding, with a smile, “Mrs. Fustian.”

Didn’t he know that she always got the last word?

“Colonel,” she said grandly. The butler obligingly opened the door and she sailed through. Her grand exit was only somewhat marred by tripping over someone’s walking stick just inside the door.

“I do beg your pardon,” said the gentleman—Gwen used the term broadly—in a voice that carried the faintest hint of a French accent.

He looked her up and down, from her bedraggled purple traveling costume to the maltreated hat she had crammed on her dirty hair. “The missing chaperone, I presume?”

When they approached, they saw that the tower was not black at all, but silver, a silver so bright that it hurt their eyes and caused them to shy back. From within the tower there was the ringing of a bell, and a drawbridge came clanging down before them. A man stood on it, caparisoned in silver armor, darkly chased in mysterious designs of gold and ebony. “I am the Knight of the Silver Tower,” quoth he. “What business have you with me?”

Plumeria liked him not. . . .

—From
The Convent of Orsino
by A Lady

J
ane made the introductions. “Miss Gwen, may I present to you the Chevalier de la Tour d’Argent. Chevalier, Miss Gwendolyn Meadows.”

The Chevalier bowed over her hand, which was considerably the worse for travel. If he noticed the stains on her gloves, he made no sign. “Enchanted, Madame.”

He might be, but she wasn’t. Gwen thumped her parasol on the ground, dangerously close to the Chevalier’s too-shiny boot. “The Knight of the Silver Tower? What sort of name is that?”

The Chevalier pressed a hand to his heart. A heavy gold signet ring showed bright against the dark superfine of his jacket. “The name with which my birth burdened me, no less and no more.”

“There could hardly be more,” contributed Jane, “unless one wished to add a few adjectives to it for ballast.”

A hint of a dimple appeared in the Chevalier’s cheek as he glanced at Gwen’s charge. “The Knight of the Exceedingly High and Rather Unwieldy Silver Tower? My acquaintances should expire of boredom before the introduction was complete.”

“If one were to choose a tower,” said Gwen grumpily, “why not gold?”

“I believe,” said the Chevalier gravely, “that the appellation was originally awarded to a great-great-great-grandparent during the Crusades.”

Jane raised a brow. “For deeds of great valor?”

“No,” said the Chevalier sadly, but there was a glint in his eyes. “For cupidity beyond imagining. It was, I fear, the ill-famed Fourth Crusade, and this most unprincipled knight returned from the sack of Byzantium with so much purloined silver plate that his peers enviously dubbed him the Knight of the Silver Tower. I assure you, it was no honor, but those of his line have stubbornly held to it ever since.”

“Most families have equally ignominious origins when one comes down to it,” said Jane.

The Chevalier’s smile was only for Jane. “Does yours?”

“We’re quite dull, really. A great-grandparent too many greats back to remember took a fancy to a particular patch of soil in Shropshire and we’ve been there ever since.”

“Bucolic, perhaps,” said the Chevalier gallantly, “but never dull.”

That was quite enough of that. Gwen glowered at the upstart Frenchman taking up valuable space and even more valuable time. “How do you come to be in our front hall?”

Jane cast her a quelling glance. “The Chevalier has been kindly assisting us in our inquiries.”

“Oh, have you, then?”

The Chevalier affected a half bow. “There are places that a man might go that I fear are barred to you ladies. As I have told Miss Wooliston, my curricle and escort are at her disposal.”

“How very . . . helpful of you. To what do we owe this solicitude? You’re not related to the Reid girl, are you?” She was reasonably sure the Colonel would have mentioned a Frenchman running amuck on his family tree. On the other hand, given his amorphous gaggle of offspring, one couldn’t be sure. She doubted he was a Reid pretending to be a Frenchman, but one never knew. “You don’t happen to be named Jack, do you?”

“Er, no.” The Chevalier was all that was apologetic. “Forgive me for that oversight. My elder brother was a Jean-Marie, but we have no Jacques of which I know. My family calls me Nicolas. Or occasionally that limb of Satan. The two appear to be largely interchangeable.”

He was making eyes at Jane again. Gwen rapped her parasol on the ground, calling them both to attention. “What’s your interest in the girls, then?”

“The Chevalier’s cousin is a teacher at the school,” said Jane calmly. “You met her last week. Mademoiselle de Fayette. The girls were on her hall.”

“She takes this matter very much to heart,” said the Chevalier with seeming sincerity. The emphasis on “seeming.” Earnestness did not become him. That face of his was made for mischief and deviltry, from his too-exuberantly curling locks to his laughing eyes.

“Hmph,” said Gwen. “So you’ve taken it upon yourself to clear her good name, have you?”

“Something of that nature.” The Chevalier indulged in one of those indeterminate Gallic gestures somewhere between a wave and a shrug. “Delphine is the only family I have. I take my responsibility to her quite seriously indeed.”

Gwen vaguely remembered the French mistress, small and sweet faced, meek in the gray gown of a schoolmistress. She certainly bore no resemblance to the imp of a dandy in their front hall, rigged out in the height of fashion down to the cameo fobs on his watch chain.

She folded her arms across her chest. “Your cousin, you say?”

“Yes.” He winked at Jane before turning back to her chaperone, as innocent as a choirboy. “My mother was the Comtesse de Brillac.”

“An old and honorable line,” Jane said diplomatically.

The Chevalier shrugged. “Once. Perhaps. Of all my family, Delphine and I were the only ones to escape the bite of the guillotine.”

There was one problem with his story. “Why are you then not the Comte de Brillac rather than the knight of the so lengthy silver tower?” asked Gwen accusingly.

The merriment fled from the Chevalier’s face. He looked, for a moment, considerably older than his presumed age, harsh lines marring the skin around his mouth. “I would not take his title.”

The words echoed harshly through the hall, at odds with the delicacy of the too-fussy mirror that hung on the wall, the mincing tile squares on the floor.

The Chevalier shook himself back to the present. He raised his eyebrows at Jane with a wry expression, the charm firmly back in place. “How could I take his title, knowing the end he met? I had a brother, too, my older brother, Jean-Marie. That title would one day have been his. I will not profit from his death.”

“Your feelings do you credit,” said Jane gently.

Gwen refrained from a snort.

What was Jane thinking, letting this French coxcomb accompany her on her inquiries? The man himself might be nothing to do with the school, but his cousin—his presumed cousin, Gwen corrected herself darkly—was the mistress in charge of Agnes’s hall. She would have been a prime suspect even without the accent.

The Chevalier spread his hands. “A wound is a wound only so long as it remains open. That life was a lifetime ago—and I find nothing to complain of in my existence here. It is Delphine who has suffered most, and if I can make her easier in any way, I shall.”

“Charming,” said Gwen combatively. “Nicely said. Why, then, is she teaching at that ridiculous school?”

The Chevalier’s coat alone cost more than a teacher’s salary for a year. It certainly cost more than Gwen had to her name. For a moment, she thought of the Colonel’s coat, the cheap fabric stiff with blood. She had wrung it out over the basin in that little inn room, doing her best to rehabilitate it. He had donned the stained and crumpled garment without a murmur.

But this wasn’t about the Colonel; it was about the Chevalier. There was something about the situation that didn’t add up, and Gwen was determined to winkle it out.

The Chevalier spread out his hands, not one whit abashed. “You mean when I have every worldly good, all of which I am prepared to shower upon her?”

“If you wish to put it that way, yes.” It was exactly what she’d meant, yet somehow he’d managed to turn it to his credit.

“She refuses to accept my aid.” The Chevalier turned mournful eyes on Jane. “She escaped only with the clothes on her back, through the good offices of your—how was it again?—your Purple Gentian.”

There was a charged silence in the hall.

“I believe I have heard the name,” said Jane demurely. “His exploits were much in the papers in my youth.”

“Nonsense, all of it,” said Gwen brusquely. “Spies flying through windows, leaving notes on pillows—pure palaver.”

The Chevalier turned his attention back to her. “You, then, are not an admirer of these men?”

“I might be if I believed the half of it,” grumbled Gwen. “Pure puffery, puffery and nonsense.”

The Chevalier gave her a crooked smile. “Yet that nonsense, as you call it, saved the life of my cousin. I find I cannot bring myself to dismiss these men so entirely as you do, however absurd their noms de guerre.” He held out a hand to Jane. “I fear I overstay my welcome. I will call for you tomorrow?”

To Gwen’s annoyance, Jane allowed the bounder to possess himself of her hand, to bow over it, dusting a kiss over the back of it. It wasn’t the sort of kiss of which a chaperone might justly complain. He didn’t hold her hand too long or essay a rogue’s trick like turning her hand to press a kiss into the palm.

But there was something undeniably intimate about it nonetheless. It might have been the way his eyes held Jane’s as he raised his head, or the way Jane looked back at him, as though she were equal parts apprehension and fascination.

Gwen had seen Jane flirt with many admirers, but she had never seen her look like that.

“Yes, tomorrow.” Jane walked with her admirer to the door, Gwen trailing along behind, fuming helplessly. “We shall see you at the opera?”

The Chevalier retrieved his hat and gloves from the butler, pressing the entire mess of belongings to his heart as he said, “I shall count the minutes.”

He clapped the hat upon his head and departed.

“I hope all that counting doesn’t overtax his mathematical skills,” muttered Gwen. Through the window, she could see the Chevalier climbing into a flashy high-perch phaeton, painted an impractical pale blue.

“Welcome back,” said Jane drily. “I trust you had a pleasant journey?”

Gwen followed her into the morning room, which, like all the other rooms in the Woolistons’ rented house, had been relentlessly decorated by someone who had lurched at good taste and missed by the length of several yards of bric-a-brac. Portraits of someone’s idealized ancestors leered at them from above the fireplace, interspersed with Watteau shepherdesses, Fragonard fetes, and miscellaneous simpering putti.

“I see you’ve been busy in my absence,” said Gwen pugnaciously, flinging her reticule down on the settee. “Entertaining dubious gentlemen callers.”

“Would you like some tea?” suggested Jane, entirely unperturbed. “Some cakes perhaps?”

Gwen wasn’t going to let herself be distracted by cakes, not even the little iced ones that the Woolistons’ cook made so well.

“Your Chevalier was lying,” she said, thumping down on the settee next to her reticule. The impractical edifice buckled but held.

“Yes, I know,” said Jane calmly. She seated herself on a silk-upholstered chair by the fire. “I’m not so green as that. I did have him investigated.”

“And?”

“His father is the Comte de Brillac; his mother, father, and sister all died in the Terror.”

“But?” Gwen prompted. Jane had an aggravating habit of dragging out her revelations. It drove Gwen absolutely mad, which was probably why Jane did it.

“The tender filial picture he presented might not have been entirely the case. Brillac publicly disowned him at birth, refusing to acknowledge him as his son. The Comtesse de Brillac tried several times to flee her husband but was every time brought back.”

“So Brillac was a brute and your Chevalier was a by-blow.”

“Or his father believed him so. According to my sources, the Comte’s favorite epithet for his second born was ‘you bastard son of an Englishman.’ It is unclear,” added Jane delicately, “whether the national identification was meant descriptively or pejoratively.”

“Yes, but what is the man about now?” Gwen brushed aside the question of the Chevalier’s parentage. That sort of tittle-tattle was all very well for the readers of scandal sheets, but they had more pressing business in hand. “You say he has been assisting you?”

“Oh, yes, most assiduously,” said Jane blandly.

Gwen gave her a look. “That man is after something.”

“And it’s probably not my person,” said Jane cheerfully. “That’s why I accepted his offer. I’d rather have him under my eye.”

Was that the only reason?

She had seen Jane flirt for England many times. She did it very well, with wide, admiring eyes, a coy glance here, a demure smile there. It bore very little resemblance to what she had seen with the Chevalier in that hallway.

But no matter how Gwen tried, she couldn’t find the words to ask her. They had no vocabulary for navigating the shoals of sentiment. After two years of their common enterprise, they were expert at dissecting facts. Feelings they gave a wide berth, unless they were other people’s feelings and might somehow have a bearing on the great game of nations that they played. Sentiment, personal sentiment, had no place in their work. It was nothing more than a snare and a distraction.

Gwen only hoped that Jane would remember that.

Since she could say none of that, she said, gruffly, “What have you discovered thus far?”

Jane folded her hands neatly in her lap. To all outward appearances, she was the very image of a well-bred young lady, a picture in white muslin in a prettily appointed morning room. It was only her voice that was at odds with her appearance, brisk and businesslike, her voice and the calculating glint in her eye. Gwen found herself reassured. This was the Jane she knew, detached and analytical.

“The school is hopeless,” she said. “There are half a dozen ways in and out, including a convenient trellis that could easily be scaled by a determined man or a fleeing girl.”

“Harder to carry someone out that way,” Gwen pointed out. “A kidnapper might get in, but he’d have a hard time getting out again.”

“True,” said Jane. “Especially with two.”

She had that look in her eye. There was something she wasn’t telling. “You know something,” said Gwen sternly. “Out with it.”

“There is,” said Jane, “a small hut on the grounds, not far from the main house. It was previously the abode of the gardener, before the last gardener was let go. I found this beneath the dresser.”