Wicked, My Love (20 page)

***

Isabella waited in a long line that wove around Euston station. Policemen patrolled the building, drumming their batons in their palms. The chatter echoed off the high ceiling above it all, and a man shouted arrival and departure times while another, selling newspapers, sang out rhymes made for the day's headlines.

“Lord Randall, that golden boy,

The progress of England he intends to destroy,

What will become of his family's old glory,

When challenged by two Whigs, a Chartist, and Tory?”

She listened to the songs, terrified that she might hear Bank of Lord Hazelwood in the stanzas of the nasty little ditties.

By the time she reached the window, the train for Tupping-on-the-Water was departing in thirteen minutes. She could just make it.

She opened her mouth to speak when she heard Randall's voice thunder, “Two first-class round-trip tickets for Tupping-on-the-Water.”

She turned to find the viscount sprinting along the line. Her rebellious, stupid heart lifted. Perspiration spiked the hair about his forehead and temples. His coat flapped behind his elbows and his vest was held by a single button. He sidled in beside her, breathin
g heavily.

“Y-you're breaking in the queue,” she cried. “I hate when people do that.”

“We're together,” he told the ticket master, taking her elbow. A current of hot, crackling electricity shot up her arm and down to her female regions.

“No, we are not,” she countered. “I'm tired, and I prefer a car to myself.” In truth, she didn't want to be near Randall. She wasn't strong enough yet. Even now, his touch was undoing her.

“Me lady,” the annoyed ticket master began, “this line is filled with people trying to get on the train
to Tupping—”

“Give us two seats in the same carriage,” Randall said in that annoying, commanding, male way of ending discussions.

“Don't listen to him,” she cried. “What if he were a murderer intent on strangling me?”

The ticket master released an annoyed huff and slid two tickets across the marble surface. She and Randall raced to collect them. He beat her, his palm slapping down on the slab, covering the tickets. She pried at his fingers.

“My death could be on your hands,” she told the ticket master, who didn't appear to be overwrought at the prospect of her homicide, except to signal to an approaching policeman.

“What is the matter here?” the policeman inquired.

“She just wants to be alone,” Randall explained, scooping up the tickets and shoving them in his pocket. “So she won't have to confront her feelings.”

“Not everybody feels the immature need to spout their every emotion,” she retorted, her voice echoing to the ceiling. “Some of us are perfectly content remaining calm and stoic.”

“Calm and stoic?” Randall barked a laugh. “Don't you mean repressed and rigid?”

“All right, all right then,” the policeman said, his voice weary. He seized both of them by their arms. “Let's have your little lovers' quarrel in a more convenient location.”

“We are not lovers!” she shouted at the same time the viscount said, “Unhand me, I am Lord Randall!” All the heads in the line whipped around to stare. The room turned silent. Mortified heat burned her cheeks.

Then the newspaper seller cried, “Aha!” and began to sing:

“Viscount Lord Randall

Caught in a scandal

First class, please, for the fair lady and scoundrel.”

Isabella turned and fled for the platform.

Isabella found an empty seat on a carriage
containing
a severe family consisting of a withered mother, dour husband, sullen grown sister, and bored younger brother, all dressed in mourning. The grimness was broken only by a white lily in a pot on the mother's lap. Isabella sneezed. Could she take an entire train ride of watering eyes and sneezing? She glanced out the window to see Randall running down the platform, calling her name. Yes, she could.

She murmured her greetings and condolences to the family and took the empty seat by the window, furthest from the flower. As the train started to move, the door burst open. “There you are,” Randall cried.

Fudge!
“This carriage is full,” she told him.

“Oh, what a stunning lily,” Randall said to the withered woman, removing his hat. “The flower is nice as well.” The woman's severe face softened. She scooted over, letting him sit between her and h
er husband.

Honestly, Randall can romance any woman. I must have been easy prey.

She felt safe with the dour, quiet family separating her and Randall. Unfortunately, they got off two stations down the line.

As soon as the door had closed, Randall shot across the carriage. Why couldn't he be like her and just let what happened last night lie silent, smoldering and festering, in a hidden grave in his heart? But he had to speak. After all, he was the famous orator. He slid beside her and tried to entwine her fingers. “I thi
nk we—”

“Can we just save the bank?” she protested, edging away from him until she was jammed against the window. “That's all that really matters. Then you can go back to…to Cecelia or someone else. Or marry some Tory's ravishing daughter and continue your golden path to prime minister and never utter another word about last night.”

He stared at her and then flung up his hands. “Very well. I'll play this ridiculous game. So, what about you, Isabella? What if we save the bank? What happens to you?”

“I don't starve. I-I don't ruin my father's memory or lose all he worked for.” Isabella's eyes moistened. The essence of that stupid lily obviously still lingered in the carriage. She wiped her eyes with her gloved hand. “For God's sake, it was a game. Just a game.”

“One we shouldn't have played. It was a horrible mistake, and I'm damnably sorry.”

“You…you are?” She wished he hadn't said those words. He was supposed to say something like,
It
was
a
wonderful
game—the best I ever played. It's a shame we will never, ever do it again. And even though I can't stop thinking about how beautiful and amazing I felt in your arms and how I'm going to live the rest of my life knowing I will never experience anything that perfect again—I'm not going to talk about what happened. Silence to the grave.

But instead, he regretted her. She was his “horri
ble mistake.”

“Aren't you?” His beautiful eyes searched her face, but she couldn't look at him because of those blessed tears threatening again.

She closed her eyes and tried to force a lie about how last night meant nothing to her, just a pleasant diversion from these tense hours. But when she opened her mouth, no words came, just a hurt squeak.
I'm not a mistake.

“Oh, Isabella.” He leaned in to wrap her in his embrace. She didn't have the strength to fight him. Then, in a twinkling, he flew across the carriage, leaving her to hug the cold air.

“Wh—”

The door burst opened and a footman helped a woman into the carriage. Stiff coils of salt-and-pepper hair fell about her face, and she wore a blue fur-lined cloak over her expansive skirts. A tiny, furry dog's head poked out from her green valise.

“Lord Randall!” the woman exclaimed. “What a surprise! I thought you would be at your house party.”

He flashed a pleasant, polite smile, as if the previous minutes when he'd broken Isabella's heart hadn't happened, and rose to assist the lady. “I'm afraid I'm taking a sad journey to visit an ill friend,” he said, his voice low and mournful.

The woman pressed her palm to her chest, clanking her bracelets. “Oh, I'm so very sorry.” She whirled around. “Did you hear, my dearest darlings? Poor Lord Randall has a sick friend.” Behind her massive skirt stood two young ladies, waiting their turn to enter. The dearest darlings murmured their sympathies, but their cheeks were flushed and eyes dancing upon hearing the “sad” news that they would be sharing a train carriage with Lord Randall.

They broke into giggles when he clasped their fingers, leading them to a seat.

“I'm dreadfully sorry, monumentally sorry, that I had to decline your family's kind invitation,” the mother continued. “Weren't we, dearest darlings? But it is Mama's eightieth birthday. We simply couldn't get away. Ah, but now you are here. We shall have a nice, cozy chat.” The little dog began to yip. “Yes, we will, my little poo-poo,” she cooed to the hound, tugging its ear. “Oh, good heavens! I didn't see you there,” she cried, spying Isabella, who was smashed against the window and was covered in reams of the dearest darlings' overflowing skirts. She must not have assumed any connection between Isabella and Randall because she didn't wait for an introduction. “I'm Lady Rexmore. My husband is the Earl of Rexmore and Mama is the Dowager Duchess of Fenshire, y
ou know.”

Maybe Isabella's lack of sleep or anxiety about her future or acute heartache subdued the typical tongue-tied nervousness she felt whenever meeting new people. A tiny devil danced in her eyes when she tartly replied, “I'm Miss St. Vincent, spinster, member of the Wollstonecraft Society for the Rights of Women. Mama was an Irish immigrant, you know.”

“Oh,” the woman said after a long, shocked pause, and then, “Oh” again and finally, “How nice for you.” She tucked her little dog closer, as if it might contract whatever disease Isabella carried. At least Isabella regained valuable seating territory, as the daughters retreated closer to Randall, their protector from the dangerous spinster.

She kept her ear pressed to the glass, hoping the chug of the engine would drown out the giggle-infested, insipid chatter about people she didn't know or teas, balls, and house parties that she wasn't invited to. He rolled along with the ladies' banter, knowing all the names and addresses, and sliding in devious little comments which caused the misses to blush and their mother to fan her face and exclaim, “Aren't you naughty, Lord Randall?”

How easily he flirted. He just as easily charmed willing courtesans, actresses, and desperate spinsters to his bed. He was only sorry that he had chosen the wrong one last night.
A
horrible
mistake
. Isabella recalled all the “my loves” murmured with the same breezy ease as he moved inside her. She should have known Randall's words had no connection to his heart. The only thing occupying his blood pumper was his own ambition.
Accept
your
losses
and
save
your
bank.

But when she looked at him, his bright gaze latched on to the young ladies, her throat burned. She itched to run her nails down the dearest darlings' gowns and then across Randall's smiling, handsome face.

***

Randall watched Isabella sit with her cheek pressed against the glass, hands clenched, rocking with the train's rhythm. Even though he knew it was safer to pretend not to know each other, he would have appreciated some conversational help. An hour into the miserable journey, he wanted to leap to his feet and shout, “Don't you understand? My reputation and honor are about to be destroyed. I'm falling in love with the wrong woman, abandoned children clutter London's doorsteps, and I'm having to talk about promenading in the damn park and praising blo
ody bonnets!”

Despondency weighed on him as he drew an analogy:
my
whole
life
is
about
being
trapped
on
a
first-class train carriage, complimenting millinery, and making pleasant, mindless chatter
. He couldn't stem these gloomy thoughts; they kept swelling like water from a spring. He composed his face in a pleasant expression, he murmured the correct words, but inside his anxious mind, the ladies' banter was like the annoying buzz of a fly. Across the carriage, Isabella remained quiet, staring at the countryside. He could see the scenery reflecting off her lenses. Sometimes she moved her lips, biting the inner corner of one or rubbing them together. As much as she angered or frustrated or hurt him—he didn't know anymore—he wanted to feel the comfort of those lips again. At every stop, he hoped Lady Rexmore and her daughters would say their adieus, so he could hold Isabella. But in the end, the Tupping-on-the-Water station arrived first.

Isabella fled the carriage as if it were about to go up in flames. Meanwhile, Randall was delayed, accepting condolences for his sick friend and best wishes for every member of his extended family, promising to attend Lady Rexmore's debut ball for her daughter that spring, as well as to call on them when he was next in London. By the time the ladies were finished, he had to leap from the moving train. He scanned the platform; Isabella was nowhere to be seen.

Would it have killed her to wait for him?

He stomped into the station, muttering curses under his breath. Amid porters lugging trunks, muffin vendors calling out, and people coming to a dead halt in the middle of the busy hall to listen to the departures being announced, he spied her speaking to a porter by the door.

“Izzy May,” he shouted across the room.

She shot him a look that would have sent the hounds of hell scurrying away, their tails between their legs. The situation was tense already; must she exacerbate it? He jogged to her.

“Mrs. Merckler lives in a manor house on the hill,” the porter was explaining. “After leaving the station, turn to the left and follow the street a half mile out of the village gates.”

“Are you sure it's only a half mile?” Isabella demanded. “Have you measured it?”

The young porter raised his brows, offended. “I walk past it every day, miss.” Any injury Isabella may have inflicted was forgotten when she dropped a groat into his palm. “It's probably less, miss,” he assured her. “And downhill part of the way.”

“Thank you,” she replied, and headed off as if Randall wasn't standing beside her, offering his arm.

He bit another curse back and caught up with her.

“Can we talk now?” he demanded, his voice harsher than he intended, as they stepped outside. The clouds were low and thick, and the air wet. Pastel town houses lined the street. Women clustered in the doorways, conversing while holding babies on their hips. At their hems, small children played.

“I said before that there is nothing to talk about.”

“Of course there isn't,” he said in mock agreement. He matched her strident pace, only causing her to walk faster. “You know you could have said a nice word to Lady Rexmore, instead of leaving me to do all the work.”

“You looked like you were enjoying yourself,” she fired back. “It's so hard to be adored and coddled. How did you manage it?”

“Well, I had to make up for your chilly demeanor,” he said, his voice getting louder.

“As if she wanted to talk to me! The Irish rights-for-women advocate. She was just terrified that I would give her daughters some socially disfiguring disease before their debut ball.”

He shook his palms before his face. “Woman, why do you assume everyone will think badly of you?”

“Previous experience.”

“All of England's spinsters and widows are enamored of you.”

“That's because they don't know the real me. And, as I recall, you don't think too highly of me either.”

“What!” He could feel the veins in his neck bulge. He grabbed her arm. “We need to talk. Now.”

“Very well!” she yelled, causing several of the women gabbing in the doorways to turn their heads and stare. “If I talk, will you leave me alone? Then can we go about solving our real problems?” She didn't wait for his answer. “I don't belong in your world of polite teas, balls, gossip, old family glory, ravishing actress mistresses, and gently bred, giggling, dearest darling debutantes.” His chest tightened as she said the words he didn't want to admit. “I'm a detriment to you in any capacity. So if you are thinking of some gentle way to tell me not to get too attached to you, that you could never lo—
like
me, well, save your breath. I was your, quote, ‘horrible mistake.' I'm—”

“You're changing my words. I never said—”

“I'm clumsy and strange…and…and…I don't want you anyway. We're enemies, remember?” A fat teardrop rolled onto her lashes.

“Then why are you crying?”

“I'm not!” She wiped her eyes. “I don't cry unless something is blooming or…or there's hay about, or certain types of dogs can—”

“Dammit, if you keep denying how you truly feel, if you keep trying to push all your emotions into a tight, tiny ball, one day you're going to blow like a steam engine.”

“Let's just hope I'm not in the poorhouse when that happens.” She yanked her arm from his hold. “There, we have spoken. Are you satisfied?”

“Bloody hell no!”

Clearly, she was mollified, because she stomped away.

A tiny child tugged at his mother's dress. “Mama, they weren't using polite words,” he said, his eyes wide. “They're in trouble.”

Randall hissed an extremely impolite word under his breath and hurried to catch his enemy. In silence, except for the swishing of their clothes, each tried to walk faster than the other. In this ridiculous manner, they exited the village gates and marched into the lush, sheep-dotted countryside.