The Perfect Stranger (23 page)

“Tell me about it.”

“I had been playing my flute—Grandpapa had forbidden music and didn’t even know I owned it. He saw me from an upper window and saw where I had hidden it. He came looking for me and instead he found Hope. Unfortunately she had taken off her rope, and so he didn’t realize which twin she was—”

“What do you mean, she had taken off her rope?”

“Hope is left-handed. Grandpapa tied her hand behind her all the time so she could not use it, but Hope was more defiant than I. She sometimes got one of the servants to cut the ropes off.”

She said it in such a matter-of-fact way, he was appalled. “Good God! He sounds like a complete brute!”

“Yes, he was a terrible man. Anyway, he grabbed Hope and accused her—thinking she was me. And he found the flute and smashed it and then he beat Hope.” She bit her lip, remembering. “I didn’t even know until afterward.”

Nick urged his horse beside her, reached out, and caught her hand in his. “Poor little girls. Poor little twin. She did it deliberately, didn’t she? To protect you.”

Faith nodded. Her voice was husky as she said, “She always tried to protect me from him. She is very brave, my twin sister.”

“Very brave, and very special, just like you.” And he lifted her left wrist and kissed the inside of it tenderly. She looked at him, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

He tried to think of a way to ease her tension, to comfort her. She’d said she didn’t want to dwell in the past, and he could well understand why.

“That is the past, though. We live in the present, now, remember?” he said softly. “Wasn’t Hope the same sister who taught you to embrace the joy in the present?”

She nodded dumbly.

“I make up tunes, too,” he said diffidently.

“You?” She blinked, startled at his admission. “Of course! I’d forgotten for a moment you played the guitar. So much has happened—and you haven’t touched your guitar for ages.”

He shrugged. “There hasn’t been much time for playing music.” He glanced at her. “But now’s as good a time as any. Stevens, pass my guitar, please.”

From the packhorse, Stevens pulled out the guitar. Nick knotted his reins so they rested on his horse’s withers, took the guitar, and began to tune it. His horse walked on without so much as a flick of an ear, testament to the fact that this was no unusual occurrence. Nick started to play, a Spanish tune, and as he played he watched her relax and gradually give herself over to the music.

“It’s lovely,” she exclaimed.

“Play your flute, miss,” called Stevens, and she glanced at Nick.

“The more the merrier,” he said.

Needing no further encouragement, Faith pulled out her flute and joined in, hesitantly at first. The tune he’d been playing was unfamiliar to her, but she soon picked it up and began a bright counterpoint to the slow, rather sad song. Slowly both the tempo and the mood of the song picked up.

“Ah, that’s grand, miss,” said Stevens when they finished. “Now how about something me and Mac can sing to.”

Faith glanced at the dour Scotsman in surprise.

“Oh, he can sing if he’s a mind to,” said Stevens, understanding. “He can play as well—if you can call it music, that is. There’s a set of bagpipes in here.” He jerked a thumb at the bundles on the packhorse and winked at Faith as he spoke.

“Ach, it’s music a’right, ye ignorant wee Sassenach, but it’s only fer important occasions. Bagpipes are no’ for time-wasting frivolity.”

Faith wondered what sort of important occasion he’d brought his bagpipes for. Perhaps he planned to pipe a lament for fallen comrades when they visited those battlefields. Where was it that Algy had died?

Just then Nicholas began an army marching song and instantly Stevens joined in a cracked, lusty voice, and after a moment, Faith chimed in with her flute. From time to time she even caught a deep rumble that could have been Mac, but she wasn’t sure. They continued on for some time until the horses were sufficiently spelled and it was time to put the instruments away and pick up the pace again.

She was still feeling moved, not just by the pleasure of the music, but by Nicholas’s response to her story of the smashed flute. He’d understood instinctively that Hope had taken her punishment, and he knew how the guilt of that flayed Faith. No one outside her family had so easily understood or accepted the twinly bond she and Hope shared.

“Over there is Dieppe.” Nicholas’s voice broke into Faith’s thoughts. She was happy, she thought. Really happy. A simple sort of happiness that she’d thought she’d never feel again. She was agreeably tired and her skin tingled—no doubt she’d caught a little too much sun—her complexion was probably ruined forever, but she didn’t care. It could also be the salt dried on her skin that made it tingle. Whatever the case, she didn’t care. She was happy.

She looked at the town in the distance but could see no particular reason why he’d pointed it out. They’d passed by several small villages and towns. Dieppe looked larger, and she could see turrets. “You mean I should look at the castle? It is a castle, isn’t it? Do you know much about it?”

“No. And I didn’t mean the castle. Dieppe is a port.”

She waited for him to continue, but he said no more. “Is it?” she said encouragingly. “Is it a large port?”

He gave her an impatient look. “Its size is immaterial, madam. It is a port.”

Faith sighed. So they were back to
madam
again, were they? She’d hoped they progressed beyond that, particularly after the night they’d spent together and then her lovely swimming lesson and those glorious moments in the sea together afterward. And then the final joy of playing her flute, making music with friends. She refused to let him ruin her happy mood with his officer voice and his
madams
!

“Yes, I understand it is a port. You made that quite clear.”

He gave a satisfied nod, as if that cleared everything up. Faith was more at sea than ever. “Umm, why would I be interested in a port?”

He said, a little impatiently, as if she was being obtuse, “Boats sail from Dieppe to England quite often. It is a longer trip than from Calais or Boulogne, but—”

“I have no wish to sail to England.” Now she knew what he was getting at, and she would have none of it. She would not be dumped on a boat and sent back!

He gave her an intense look. “It would be better for you if you did.”

“I disagree,” she declared loftily. “I am having a perfectly lovely time. I am not holding you up—” She broke off, recalling their idyll in the sea. But that delay was as much his fault as hers. Almost. “Well, only a lit tle,” she amended. How he could think of sending her packing after the happy day they had had!

That was it, she thought, suddenly arrested. It was as if he did not trust anything that made him happy. Anything that made him feel. Or was it her feelings he did not trust? Whatever it was, she would not be dispatched like an inconvenient parcel!

“That is the point.”

She said incredulously, “You would force me onto a boat because of a delay at the beach while you—we—”

He cut her off hastily. “No, of course not because of that.” He frowned. “Or at least, not in the way you think.” He urged his horse closer to hers and said in a low voice, “I have been observing you for the last few hours.”

She arched an eyebrow. “And?”

“You, madam, have had a—a—
look
on your face!” he accused her.

“A look? Dear me. What sort of look, pray?”

He rolled his eyes, apparently frustrated by her lack of understanding. He leaned across and growled, “A
dreamy
look, madam!”

“Dreamy? How shocking,” she said placidly. “It has always been a besetting fault of mine. Never mind, I’ll try to concentrate better in future.”

He made a growling sound under his breath. “Madam, it is partly my fault, I know. I should never have, er, done what we did in the water—”

She deliberately misunderstood him. “I shall never regret learning to float and swim.”

“You know what I mean. What we did
afterward
!”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes that.” He sounded nettled. “And ever since, you have been looking dreamy.”

She shrugged.

“And you have been
humming
!”

“You said you didn’t mind the humming,” she flashed. “You said it sounded pretty!”

He rolled his eyes again. “It’s not the humming I mind—it’s what’s behind it.”

She frowned. “What do you think is behind it?”

He looked uncomfortable, then he said deliberately, as if uttering an unpalatable truth, “I think you may be spinning castles in the air, madam. Against which I particularly warned you.”

So she was right; her feelings did unnerve him. Faith squinted at the castle on the horizon and said, “Heavens, is that what it is? It looks quite solid to me. Fancy it being an illusion. What causes it, do you know?”

“I am not talking about the castle at Dieppe,” he snapped. “I am talking about your becoming
attached
! Thinking thoughts about the future! Planning things, when I have warned you repeatedly that there is no future for the two of us!”

Faith gave him a long look. “You’re quite wrong, you know,” she said after a moment. “The only thing I’m attached to at the moment is my lovely new flute.” She waggled the flute, which was on a string around her neck. “And if you want to know what I was dreaming about, it was the idea of a hot bath. I wasn’t planning anything apart from that.”

He looked even more displeased at that, so she gave him a bright smile and further reassurance. “Attached? To
you
? How silly. You specifically ordered me not to get attached, didn’t you?

“I did.”

“And I said I agreed to your terms, didn’t I?”

He nodded. “You did.”

“Well then. That’s all right then, isn’t it? We don’t need to go to Dieppe after all—that is unless you would like to look over the castle?” She peered at him inquisitively. “Do you?”

“No, I don’t want to look at the blasted castle, madam!”

“Neither do I,” she agreed, resisting the temptation to remind him she could spin her own castles, ones that floated, what’s more.

“Then take a last look at the sea. We’ll be turning inland for a while now, and when we reach the coast again it won’t be the English Channel you’ll see, but the Bay of Biscay.”

“The Bay of Biscay—isn’t that famous for its bloodthirsty pirates?”

“Not anymore,” he said dampeningly. “They were all eradicated. Besides which, we won’t be sailing across the bay; we shall be riding around it.”

A thought occurred to her. “If there are no pirates any longer, and since you are in such a hurry to get there, why didn’t you just sail direct to Portugal from England? Why waste so much time going to Calais and then riding all the way down?”

There was a muffled choking sound from Stevens, but when she looked at him to see what the matter was, he was staring ahead with his face completely wiped clean of all expression. She glanced at Mac, and he, too, looked completely wooden faced. It was an improvement on his usual scowl.

“The horses,” Nicholas said after a moment. “The horses don’t like sailing.”

“Yes, miss,” Stevens agreed loudly. “It was coz of the horses. Nothing to do with people at all. Nobody here would turn green when he so much as stepped on a boat, no indeed. It were entirely fer the benefit o’ the horses.”

She glanced at Nicholas’s face, which was rather redder than it had been a moment earlier, and bit her lip.

“It is true I am not the best of sailors,” he said with stiff dignity. “But the horses don’t like sailing either.”

“Good then, that’s settled. None of us wants to get onto a boat!” She urged her horse into a trot and joined the others. She tried to keep the smile on her face, because after all, she’d won this little skirmish, hadn’t she?

The trouble was she didn’t feel victorious. The thought troubled her that if she had admitted that she was “getting attached,” he would have put her on the first boat leaving Dieppe.

They’d shared such a joyous afternoon, with swimming and sunshine and laughter—and then they’d shared music. Faith couldn’t have imagined a more heavenly day. And suddenly he was ready to turn her off and send her back to England. She couldn’t understand it.

Why was he so determined not to let her love him? What was he afraid of? Didn’t he want to be loved? Faith couldn’t understand it. She’d yearned for love all her life.

Why would anybody fear love? She glanced across at her hard-faced husband and wondered.

He found them a bed to sleep in the next night, too, above a village tavern. A small room under the eaves, it had a crooked roof and a floor that sloped to one corner, but it was clean, and the bedding smelled fresh.

So much for sleeping rough on the cold, hard ground
, Faith thought to herself with a smile. Beneath his tough talk of her needing to endure the privations of a soldier’s existence, her husband was very protective of her comfort. Though…her smile widened…his motive might not be solely her comfort.

All her initial reservations about sleeping with a man she barely knew had flown out the window after that first night. When he came to bed, Nicholas Blacklock left the steely eyed officer behind him and became a smoky-eyed lover who made love to her with a concentration and intensity that melted her very bones.

Faith and her twin sister had been called beauties by the London ton. And though she enjoyed the parties and the balls and the admiration of elegantly dressed men and women, it had touched her far less than the way Nicholas looked at her the instant before he touched his mouth to her skin. At that moment she
felt
beautiful in a way she never had before.

Faith had never seen herself as a beauty. Any girl who had grown up with Grandpapa knew that physical beauty was a two-edged sword and vanity a sin that courted a thrashing. There were no looking glasses at Dereham Court, and no visitors to admire. There were only sisters.

In any case, when Faith looked in the mirror, it was like looking at her twin’s face. To outsiders, she and Hope might look pretty and glamorous and confident, but they both knew that deep inside, they felt none of these things.