The Perfect Stranger (15 page)

He gave her an intense look and said quietly. “No thanks needed. You’re my wife, Faith. I’ll support you against all comers in all situations.”

Faith’s eyes prickled with emotion, but before tears could spill down and embarrass her, he added, “Besides, it was a pleasure. I can’t stand puffed-up, bossy old bats like that. And the daughter was just as bad. You’d run into them before, I gather.”

“Yes, the other day, in town. I could see they were English ladies, so I asked them to help me.” She felt the humiliation rising again and fought it back down. “But they thought I was a—a—”

He made a scornful sound. “I can imagine. Add stupidity to their list of crimes. And you were still ready to share a room with them?”

“Oh, well, that was before they were so horrid to me. I thought perhaps I could explain—I can understand how they misunderst—” She broke off at his sardonic look and added lamely, “They had nowhere to sleep, and the storm was so awful…I know what it is to have no place to stay.”

“You are very forgiving, Mrs. Blacklock. Be warned: I am not!” He drained the glass.

Mrs. Blacklock.
Again. As if she were in truth his wife. He’d assured her it would be
un mariage blanc
. But legally they were married, and husbands had rights. And there was only one bed. She swallowed.

Outside the storm raged. There was a small enameled stove and in it kindling was set, ready to light. Faith found the tinderbox and lit it, glad to have a reason to keep busy.

She would try not to think about the bed until it was time to sleep. It was cowardly, she knew, to put it off, but at the moment things were pleasant and easy between them, and she wanted to savor it while it lasted.

They sat for a moment in silence, listening to the storm. “Would you like to play chess?” he asked.

She grimaced, remembering the agony of childhood lessons where Grandpapa, confined to a sickbed, had forced them all to learn, in order to entertain himself. Only they were all too frightened of his temper to be able to concentrate. “I know the moves, but I’m not very good at it. But if you would like…”

“No, don’t worry.” He rose and paced around the room.

He filled the small room with his presence. It was terribly distracting, the storm howling outside and the silent pacing within. In an effort to break the growing tension, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Stevens told me your father forced you into the army.”

He went still, then shrugged. “I was young. My father understood me better than I did myself. The army suited my nature more than I understood at the time.”

His words, for all their apparent acceptance, were said with bitterness and a thread of self-disgust. She recalled Stevens’s words about how the army—or was it war?—had affected him.
“Changed him. Killed something inside him.”

“In what way did it suit you?” she prompted gently.

He turned abruptly and went to the door. “If you don’t mind, I’d better check on Wulf and the horses. That dog of Mac’s goes crazy in thundery weather, and Mac doesn’t take nearly the care that he should. He will not believe that his blasted dog gets frightened. He said he would shut him in an empty stall, but if he hasn’t, the blasted dog will frighten the horses to bits.”

“I don’t mind,” she lied. Oh, she didn’t mind him checking on the dog; that was perfectly understandable. It was the feeling of having a door slammed in her face she minded.

“I’ll be back at seven to take you down to dinner.”

It was foolish to mind, she told herself as he left. Married or not, they were still relative strangers. It was none of her business what he’d thought about his father sending him into the army. He was entitled to his privacy.

She’d kept secrets back from him, after all.

She shivered as the wind and rain buffeted the building. Adding coal to the fire, she fetched her writing materials and sat down at the small table to write to her family. Her twin, Hope, first, then Prudence, then Great Uncle Oswald and Aunt Gussie.

Plenty of dogs panicked at the sound of thunder, but not Beowulf. He didn’t mind thunder or guns. Checking on the dog was an excuse. He had to get out of that small room with its big, high bed: the storm beating outside and the soft-voiced, soft-skinned girl inside.

Damn those English harpies. He could have throttled them both, and not only for the way they’d treated Faith. If it hadn’t been for them, he wouldn’t have committed himself to sharing a bedchamber with his bride. Now, if he chose to share a chamber with his men, it would reflect badly on her.

He’d promised her a
mariage blanc
and was honor bound not to touch her. Even though her soft, gentle voice opened up chasms of need in him he’d thought were gone forever.

And the scent of her drove him wild.

The sooner this blasted storm was over and he could send her on her way to England, while he headed south to Spain, the happier he’d be.

He and Mac headed for the stables. Stevens had earlier braved the kitchen in order to meet the innkeeper’s widowed sister, a cook of some reputation. Having breached that lady’s defenses by begging to know the source of the glorious aromas coming from the kitchen, he was then questioned by Madame herself, exhaustively. His answers, even for an Englishman, were not totally despised, and thus he was graciously allowed to assist Madame herself, performing menial tasks as he learned her particular way of preparing
moules à la crème
.

Nicholas returned to the small bedchamber some time later and knocked on the door. “Dinner will be served in fifteen minutes. Do you want me to have a tray sent up, or would you prefer to come down?”

She opened the door. “I’ll come down.”

With all the extra, stranded guests, the inn’s resources were stretched to the limit. The dining room was crowded, but the innkeeper had broken it into two areas, one for the upper class and one for the common folk—never mind the effects of republicanism. The common folk served themselves; the others were served and paid extra for the privilege. As Nick and his bride threaded their way to their table in the superior dining area, they saw that Stevens had been pressed into service. He bustled past carrying a huge tray of dishes and threw Faith a wink. He looked hot but happy.

Nicholas shook his head philosophically as he seated Faith. “He’s hopeless. Never could stand to be idle. Loves to be needed, Stevens.”

Faith smiled. Everybody loved to be needed, she thought.

Lady Brinckat and her daughter were already seated. The landlord whispered that someone else had been willing to give up their room.

As Stevens passed the two ladies, Faith heard the girl say, “Oh, Mama. Look at his face! How beastly ugly!”

The girl was talking about Stevens, Faith realized, horrified. Referring cruelly to his war injuries.

The mother said in a loud, spiteful voice, “Avert your eyes, my dear. A fellow like that has no business in a dining room. If his master had any delicacy of mind, he would keep a grossly deformed servant like that out of sight, so that ladies with true sensibilities would not be offended.”

She was using Stevens to get back at Nicholas, Faith realized, and suddenly her temper flared. She flung back her chair and marched over to the women’s table.

“How
dare
you!” she raged. “How
dare
you refer to a man injured fighting for king and country—
and yourselves
—in such a callous, unfeeling way! Call yourselves
ladies
? You should be ashamed of your lack of sensibility! You should
honor
a man like Stevens—yes, servant or not! You should honor
every
man who has risked his life for your comfort and defense!”

The two women stared at her, stunned, as if a mouse had turned on them.

Faith glared at them, her chest heaving with emotion and her eyes prickling with angry tears. “And if you ever—
ever!
—make a nasty remark about Stevens’s face within my hearing again, I’ll—I’ll
slap
you both,
very
hard!” She wished she could think of a worse threat, but she was so upset, she could hardly think straight.

To think that anyone could use dear, kind, Stevens’s scars as a way to get back at Nicholas and her for refusing to share a bedchamber—it made her blood boil.

There was a fraught silence. Faith braced herself for further nastiness from Lady Brinckat and her daughter, but they seemed to be so shocked at her unladylike outburst that they said nothing. Lady Brinckat’s face was white, her daughter was flushed.

The sound of clapping came from the corner table. Everyone stared. Nicholas Blacklock stood, applauding. Faith stared at him, shocked.

The door to the kitchen burst open, and a large woman dressed in a white apron and mobcap stood in the doorway. Madame, the cook. Arms akimbo, she demanded in French, “What happened?” Her brother, the innkeeper, hastily translated what the English ladies had said about Stevens.

Madame swelled to even greater proportions and, enraged, began to march purposefully toward Lady Brinckat’s table. Just as she reached it, her brother finished translating Faith’s words, and she stopped in midstride. She made him repeat what Faith had said, and when he had repeated it to her satisfaction, she embraced Faith, kissing her heartily on each cheek. Sud denly everyone in the dining room started to applaud. Faith was flushed with embarrassment but could not escape.

Finally Madame finished embracing Faith. She turned on the English ladies and glared. “You!—old bitch and young one!—out!” She jerked a thumb. “I do not feed swine such as you in my dining room! Get out before I kick you out!”

Shocked by such blunt vulgarity, not to mention the implicit threat of violence from a large, sweaty, irate Frenchwoman, Lady Brinckat and her daughter hurriedly rose and scuttled from the room.

“And good riddance!” the cook declared. “Now,
ma petite tigresse
, my brother will give you some champagne.” She glanced at Nicholas, still standing, a look of amusement on his face. “The friends of Stevens are most welcome here.”

Stevens said something in her ear, and she started and then beamed with all her chins. “It is a
bridal
? Why did you not say?” She turned and announced it to the room in French. “
Ma belle tigresse
and this handsome man were married only this morning by Father Anselm.
Eh bien
, a wedding, my friends! We must celebrate!”

And so the party began. An absolute feast poured from the kitchen, dish after dish of wonderful food, the best morsels coming first always to the blushing bride and groom, washed down with bottle after bottle of champagne. And once the food had been eaten, a fiddle, an accordion, and a flute were produced by patrons, and there was music and singing. Enthusiastic hands removed tables and chairs, then dragged Faith and Nicholas out to the center of the floor, and the dancing began. The celebrations drowned out the sound of the storm that raged outside.

Finally Faith decided it was time for her to go up to bed. She whispered to Nicholas that she was tired and wanted to retire. Her voice trembled a little when she told him. He knew why she was nervous.

“Go now,” he said. “And lock your door. I will share a room with Stevens and Mac. Don’t worry.”

She gave him a look of relief and slipped quietly away.

But when Nick, an hour or so later, attempted a discreet exit, he was caught, amid much raucous and bawdy laughter. It seemed half the room had seen Faith’s exit. There was no possibility, no question of Nick being allowed the same. It was a
bridal
!

Fifty-seven happy, drunken people escorted the groom up to his nuptial chamber. Dozens of well-wishers carried him up the stairs, shouting gleeful and explicit French advice. Nick devoutly hoped his bride could not hear it.

Dozens of exuberant fists pounded noisily on Faith’s door, calling to the bride to come out and behold her master. And when she finally opened the door and peered nervously out, dressed in a long white lacy nightgown and wrapped in an eiderdown, Nick was thrust in the door with happy congratulatory cries and further, very French suggestions. He shoved the door closed on the happy throng behind him and bolted it, panting slightly.

Chapter Seven

If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere…

J
ANE
A
USTEN

T
HE ROOM LOOKED DESERTED, THE ONLY SIGN OF OCCUPATION
the rippling bed-curtains, testament to a nervous bride’s hasty retreat.

“Sorry about that,” Nick said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the storm and the noisy celebrations continuing outside his door. He parted the bed-curtains, and in the soft light of the turned-down lantern he saw her, huddled to her ears in the eiderdown.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I’ll just wait here until they go away. As soon as the noise dies down, I’ll slip out and go to the other bedchamber.”

But the noise continued. A group of men had decided to continue their celebrations on the stairs outside the bedchamber, and the sounds of drinking and talking and laughing continued.

Nicholas stuck his head around the door. “Do you mind leaving?” he attempted in his imperfect French. “My bride cannot sleep.”

This was greeted by a roar of laughter and many lewd congratulations. He tried again, but everything he said seemed to amuse them heartily. Nick, nettled, withdrew. He could get men to do almost anything, but not in another language and not when they were drunk. He could throw them bodily down the stairs, he supposed, but it seemed ungrateful to commit violence on men for overenthusiastic celebration of his good fortune and future happiness. He decided to wait them out.