The Return of the Prodigal (25 page)

He leaned in, kissed his sister’s cheek. “Thank you, Callie. I think this really could be the answer. I only wonder if I should now go warn Court that his days definitely are numbered.”

His sister’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “You really don’t have to bother. He already knows.”

L
ISETTE SAT WITH HER HANDS
in her lap, her fingers twisting together, still unable to believe Rian had agreed to accompany her to the convent.

A convent. What on earth would she do there?

Plan ways to leave, that’s what she’d do there, she decided, smiling for the first time all morning.

She still had a few gold coins, enough, she was sure, to get her to London.

London. What on earth would she do there?

What on earth would she do anywhere, if Rian wasn’t there?

She lifted her head, believing she heard hoofbeats, meaning that he had come back to the slower-moving coach, probably to check on her yet again, as if she might disappear,
poof,
from the coach and into the thin air.

Then he appeared next to the coach, bending himself low to peer into the opened window at her. “We’re almost there.”

“Thank you,” she said, and turned her head away, so that she didn’t have to look at his smile. How dare he smile!

He’d been smiling, in fact, ever since he’d come to her room the previous evening, to tell her he would escort her to the convent, and that she should be ready at eight, as he wanted to get an early start.

Why, she’d be lucky if he fully halted the coach before pushing her into the good sisters’ hands and riding back to Becket Hall, probably in time for his dinner.

Which was another thing. She had no clear idea of where she was going, although she now knew how long it would take to get there. Approximately four hours by coach.

Four hours, that’s all. And he hadn’t so much as deigned to ride with her for that short time.

He was home now, with his large and loving family around him. He had thought he needed her, wanted her, but that had only been because he’d been injured, he’d been so ill. Whole once more, she had become unnecessary to him.

And then there was the business, the terrible business, of her being the daughter of his family’s longtime enemy. She’d expected a hostile welcome, and Jacko and a few others had certainly not disappointed her, but Rian’s family had been more than kind.

Perhaps she should have stayed, at least a while longer.

But no. Rian had let her go much too easily for her to believe she was wrong to leave.

The coach turned sharply and she held on to the strap as it passed between two large stone pillars and onto a drive smoother than the roadway they’d been traveling.

She expected the coach to stop, but it didn’t. If anything, it seemed to pick up speed, traveling the long drive that went on, and on, and on, for at least a mile. Goodness, how could a Catholic convent in this non-Catholic country have such a wealth of land at its disposal? Perhaps the French nuns had been wrong, and the Holy Church was not in such dire straits in England as they’d told her.

But finally the coach stopped, and Lisette gathered her new shawl about her shoulders, took a deep breath, and waited for Rian to open the door, help her to the ground and then desert her to the fate she’d sworn she wanted.

Stupid man. Stupid Lisette. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

He opened the door, stuck his head inside, still grinning—goodness, had the man been drinking?—and offered her his hand. “Not to state the obvious, but we’re here.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, taking his hand, feeling the heat of it and exiting the coach, her eyes downcast, praying she could get through these next minutes without falling to her knees, begging Rian to at least try to love her.

She looked up at the pink-rose brick mansion with its pure white columns and many pitched roofs, and gasped. “How beautiful.”

“Fanny and Valentine think so,” Rian said as Jasper jumped down from the boot, grinning at both of them. “But, for the next few days, we’ll have the place to ourselves. I hear the gardens are still quite beautiful, for October.”

Lisette believed she could actually
feel
her cheeks going pale, the blood draining out of them. “This…this isn’t the convent?”

“With Fanny living here? Hardly.”

“So you tricked me,” Lisette said, now able to feel the blood running back into her cheeks, flushing them. Hotly. Angrily. “Rian Becket, you are the most miserable, exasperating, wrongheaded—Jasper, kill him!”

“Well, now, Miss Lisette, Jasper don’t think he can do that.”

She turned to glare at Rian, who had the absolute
nerve
to grin at her, waggle his eyebrows at her, for pity’s sake, just as if he had just said or done the most witty thing in nature. And then he said, “What can I say, Lisette? Well, except possibly this. ‘A frog he would a-wooing go’?”

“‘Sing heigh-ho says Rowley!’” Jasper completed, and then quickly bowed his head and added quietly, “Sorry, Miss Lisette. Jasper’s mam used to sing that to him.”

Lisette felt tears stinging behind her eyes, so she picked up her skirts and ran up the white stone steps to the front door being held open by a young boy in satin livery who looked at her in some shock as she demanded to be pointed toward her room.

She was safely inside her bedchamber on the second floor before the tears turned to laughter, and she buried her face in one of the many lovely silk pillows on the wide, high tester bed so that the insufferable Rian Becket wouldn’t hear her.

“Miss?”

Lisette turned onto her back on the bed and looked at the white-capped maid who had entered the room, carrying a tray holding a silver teapot, one cup and a plate of iced cakes. “Oh. Hello,” she said, not knowing what else to say. “I’m Lisette—that is, I’m Miss Beatty.”

“Eloise, miss,” the maid said, dropping into a quick curtsy before setting the tray down on a small table next to a comfortable-looking chaise. “We couldn’t know when you and Mr. Becket would arrive, seein’ as how the note from the master wasn’t all clear on that, but your bath will be ready shortly, if that’s all right?”

“My bath,” Lisette repeated, nodding. “Well, yes, that’s…that’s quite all right, thank you, Eloise. I’ve…um, I’ve a change of clothes in my portmanteau in the coach.”

“Oh, no need, miss. Her ladyship’s note to Mrs. Keating was most particular on how to dress you—oh!” Eloise grimaced, her full cheeks looking burningly hot. “That is to say, miss, her ladyship would be that happy if you was to wear what she wants you to, um…well, um, that is…”

Lisette held up a hand to save Eloise from tangling her tongue any further. “It’s all right, thank you. Her ladyship has some very firm ideas, yes?”

Eloise rolled her eyes. “Sweet as a button, she is, miss, but
bossy,
if you take my meanin’. The master? He just laughs. We all do, truth to tell. Sweet as a button, really, miss.”

Two hours later, Lisette was standing in front of a full-length mirror in her bedchamber, thinking that Fanny might be sweet as a button, but she was also evil and cunning and perfectly wonderful.

Which, as it turned out, also came very close to describing the gown she was now standing up in: evil, cunning and perfectly wonderful.

Lisette had never owned anything quite this daring, not even during her short months in Paris, as her father had insisted she be clothed as a young miss just out of the schoolroom, one who had yet to make her Debut. So she’d worn white, with modest necklines, and a single strand of pearls around her neck.

But this? No, this gown was definitely not the sort to be worn by a young miss barely away from her studies of deportment and how to curtsy to a king.

It was blue. Blue ice, that shimmered and shifted in color as she moved, as she held up the skirts and turned in a small circle, doing her best to see the cunningly cut back of the gown, the demi-train that made her feel elegant, even mysterious. Exciting.

And the soft white kid gloves that climbed above her elbows? Those were truly decadent!

She’d worried about the neckline of the gown, how low it was, but Eloise had assured her that, although Miss Fanny wasn’t quite so blessed, Miss Lisette would be quite safe in the gown, just as long as she remembered not to bend over to pick up anything. Besides, the sapphire-and-diamond necklace—that Eloise had called a
bib
—covered up at least
some
skin.

In all, Eloise had proved a treasure. She’d managed to coax Lisette’s hair over the curling rod, and then piled most of her hair up on top of her head—another thing her father had not allowed. She’d stuffed tissue paper into the toes of the silver slippers that matched the gown, and she’d even worked with brushes and pots, covering the fading bruise on Lisette’s cheek so that it wasn’t noticeable at all.

Lisette pirouetted one more time, and then grabbed Eloise and kissed her on both cheeks. “You’ve made a miracle. Thank you!”

The maid blushed, hung her head. “Her ladyship says that, too, but it isn’t true, miss. Could dress a pig and it’d still be a pig. But to dress an angel is to already have more’n half my work done for me. And it’s time, Miss Lisette. Mr. Becket is waitin’ on you, in the gardens. Let me fetch your shawl.”

Suddenly Lisette was nervous again, barely noticing the fine silver net of the shawl Eloise settled over her shoulders, then pulled down so that the material was caught in the crooks of her elbows.

It was, all in all, amazing to realize that, out of the servant clothes she’d worn for so long while nursing Rian, she at last felt a female again. A woman. Perhaps even a pretty woman, for all that her cheek was still bruised, that she’d lost nearly a stone in the past week, traveling, not sleeping, rarely eating—and that her father was a monster.

She might even look desirable.

Eloise led her down the curved marble staircase and back through the mansion, to French doors that led out onto a brick terrace that overlooked distant gardens and, wonder of wonders, a hedge maze of rather magnificent proportions. Even at her elevated position, she could not clearly see the pattern of the thing, or its center.

“How beautiful!” She squinted, peered into the distance. “And Mr. Becket?”

“Waitin’ on you down at the maze, Miss,” Eloise told her. “We was told to set up a supper for you in the clearing at the middle.”

Lizette smiled. “Really? How…romantical.”

“It is that, miss,” Eloise said, and then turned on her heels and returned to the house, leaving Lizette to take a deep breath, try to settle her quivering nerves, and take herself down the winding steps, along the curving paths that would eventually lead her to the maze.

And to Rian.

R
IAN HAD NEVER SPENT
a longer night and day, never. Not even the night before Waterloo, or the night he’d awakened in a strange bed, lifted his left arm because it hurt and realized part of it was gone.

Valentine’s valet had been brisk and efficient, helping him with his bath, shaving him, tying his neck cloth to perfection, pinning up the half-empty sleeve in a way that didn’t look so clumsy and, well, obvious.

Rian was back in his own clothing, that might be a bit loose, but that made him feel more like himself, the Rian he had been, the Rian he remembered.

It was amazing, the wonders of soap and water, a man’s own clothing, actually being able to take more than one breath without wondering if it would be his last, that his enemies would find them…that he and Lisette and Jasper would never survive to return to England.

Lisette had been right. There had been so much these past long days and weeks, so much to do, so much to fear, so many decisions that meant so much, so many different emotions running hot, and then hotter.

But she was also wrong. Yes, they may have come together out of mutual need, perhaps even a calculated need on her part, at the beginning. They had clung, held on, fought away the devils, stolen moments where there were just the two of them, and nothing else in this world.

That wasn’t love. He agreed with her there.

Love was looking at Lisette with a knife point pressed to her throat and instantly knowing your life meant nothing if she was no longer in it. Love was seeing the cut on her lip, the bruise on her cheek, and wanting nothing more than to kill the man who had dared to hurt her. Love was watching her as all her beliefs of who and what she was were taken from her, leaving her bewildered, bereft, and wanting nothing more than to give her new dreams, take away the nightmares, hold her and heal her and see her smile again.

Love was hearing her call him Rian Becket, teasing him for being romantical, and, if he was a very, very lucky man, waking up with her lying beside him for the next fifty years.

“Rian?”

He lifted his head, surprised that he hadn’t heard her approaching, and turned to smile at her. Except the smile wouldn’t come to him. Only his heart beat, that doubled in his chest, in his throat, in his ears.

The sun was at her back, outlining her in a halo of light that kissed her golden hair, shimmered on the watered silk of her gown. She was beautiful beyond all reason, yet no more beautiful than he’d always seen her, believed her to be, whether lying naked beside him in his bed or bruised and battered and covered in plaster dust, begging him to leave her, to save himself.

She was just Lisette.

Did she see him, now in his finery, as just Rian Becket?

He could only hope so, because he truly believed she loved that Rian Becket.

“My dearest Miss Beatty,” he said, bowing to her, extending his hand so that she placed hers in it. He lifted it to his mouth, kissed the tips of her gloved fingers. “I am both humbled and honored.”

“Lisette,” she told him, looking at him intently, searchingly. “I disown the name Beatty.”

“Agreed,” he told her, holding out his bent right arm to her. “I can think of another name that will suit you much better. A name I would be honored to share with you.”

She smiled, looking a bit nervous, and slipped her arm through his. Together, they entered the maze.