Aching for Always (38 page)

“Then you are in luck, my friend. The duchess and I are heading to the same place later this evening. Lord Quarley is hosting a rather extravagant week of hunting and dining. The largest dinner is tomorrow night. We should be happy to include you in our party if you are prepared to make the journey on such short notice.”

“I am,” Hugh said, then his face clouded. “But Miss O'Malley will need clothes.”

“Well, she will certainly need something beyond a chemise and coverlet,” Silverbridge said with a twinkle.

“I . . . We don't have time, and she has but one dress here.”

“Hmm.”
An apparently unflappable Silverbridge declined to question why a woman in an upstanding inn would have no clothes and instead tapped a thumb against his thigh. “I have a thought. The lady is about the size and height of Kit, my wife. Kit has trunks full of gowns. More than I could count. More than any man should have to count. Would you be willing to borrow one or two from her?” he asked Joss. “She's at our town house now, overseeing the preparations for the trip.”

“Will she mind?” Not every woman was willing to share a dress, no matter how many they owned.

“Kit? No. She was a reluctant entrant into the world of nobility. It took a good deal of persuasion on my part to convince her to marry. I think you will find her more than happy to share her largesse. I will send you with a note. I would go myself, but I am on my way to—late for, in fact—a meeting at Westminster, from which I hope to extract myself by one. We shall leave immediately after that.”

Joss looked at Hugh. Was he in? Hugh bowed.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said.

“John,” the duke corrected. “I should never hold a woman in bedclothes to such a standard of formality.”

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-TWO
 

“I hope you've brought a book,” said the duchess, a dark-haired woman of hardly more than nineteen or twenty. “Either that or a soft pillow.”

Joss laughed. They had settled in the sitting room, where Joss was an amazed observer of the parade of foodstuffs, clothes, gifts and even bedding being brought before the mistress of the house for approval before being packed into a dozen waiting trunks. The town house was huge and exquisitely decorated. It made Joss obscurely melancholy for her own youth.

“Your husband said there would be a fancy dinner tomorrow.”

“The dinner will be lovely, I think—they bring in families from around the neighborhood—but the rest of the week . . .” Kit shook her head. “The men are shooting or talking politics or smoking cigars. I should prefer to suffer a lecture on the divine right of royalty by Queen Anne rather than sit through it all, though with my unhappy luck that will happen, too.”

“But surely the wives . . .?”

“Oh, there are one or two who are all right—and I know I should try harder for John's sake—but for the most part they are as dull as their husbands. The best we can do is hope for a scandal. Last year Lord Tanger and his wife were found in bed with not one but two footmen. Or at least that's what I was told. And to think his wife spent most of the dinner at Viscount Maitland's house last week bemoaning the quality of country servants.”

Joss laughed and Kit smiled.

“Come,” she said. “Let us find you something to wear.”

Joss fell in love with a red gown with embroidered bat-wing sleeves and bodice and a high open collar that framed her neck.

“Very oriental, aye,” the duchess said. “This is quite good.”

There was a decided lack of enthusiasm in her voice. “But?” Joss asked.

“But I should like to see you in something a little more daring. Try the one at the end. Aye, that one. It almost matches Captain Hawksmoor's eyes, and I can assure you he won't bother with a cigar after dinner with you in that.”

The dress was a gorgeous, shimmering Cinderella blue with mutton-leg sleeves, an A-line skirt, and a low-cut bodice edged with ruffles in a drape of pearls that swung sensuously under each breast. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, but it wasn't until she'd been laced into it that she fully understood the reason it would turn heads.

“I don't mean to complain,” Joss said, “but I think something's missing.”

With the bodice laced tight, she saw the ruffles weren't
decorative so much as the entirety of what was meant to shield her breasts from sight.

“You need to lace it tighter, my dear.” Kit pulled the laces even tighter and retied the bow. “There's the something you were missing.”

And there they were, like two hot cross buns on ruffled blue doilies.

“I think,” Joss said, pulling the neckline higher, “this can't be right. I mean, some of the nipple shows.”

“I told you the cigar would be no match. 'Tis very French. And look. There is a certain way you can turn—lift your shoulder, that's right—in which it
all
shows.”

Joss's jaw dropped. “And you have worn this . . . in public?”

“Well, only for a moment or two. Lord Tanger had begun one of his interminable speeches about Marlborough or the Spanish or the state of the red fox in Hampshire, so I bent to reach the gravy boat, and John, who was across the table, immediately excused us both with headaches.”

“Two headaches at once? My goodness, that is unusual.”

“We felt much better after lying down.”

Joss laughed. She looked at the embroidered red gown, then back to the lovely ice blue that sizzled when she moved. “I don't know. Perhaps one must be an aristocrat to make this work.”

“That's what I thought, too, but I'm only a poor soldier's daughter and it worked for me.”

Joss looked at the expanse of blue and smiled. “You think I can pull this off?”

“If I am correct, 'twill be pulled off without you even lifting a finger.”

Their giggles were interrupted by a knock.

“Come,” Kit said.

It was Hugh, and Joss immediately readjusted the bodice. When he saw the gown, his eyes widened. “I beg your pardon,” he said to Joss. “I just wanted to let you know I am going to head back to the Grey Lamb for a bit to collect our things. Is there anything else you'll need for the journey?”

Yes. Dinner, a nap, a bath, a mug of hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and time to think about what just happened in your sitting room.
“No. Thank you.”

He gave her a look that said he had not forgotten what they'd begun. Then he bowed and stepped back into the hall.

“No, wait,” Kit called. “We have narrowed our choices down to two. The one Miss O'Malley wears and this lovely red silk from the Far East. I prefer the red. What do you say, good sir?” She caught Joss's eye and winked.

Poor Hugh. He was a man divided. The wife of his host was suggesting the red gown, but every particle of his being quivered perceptibly for the blue.

“I think both would do,” he said at last. “Why, I have often seen ladies make use of two gowns: one for day and—”

“Another for night?” The duchess angled her head innocently.

“Aye. Exactly.”

“Then two it shall be.” To Joss she remarked, “I suggest you keep the gravy boat close.”

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-THREE
 

Despite the weariness and pain that seemed to be his constant companions, Hugh floated down the dark London street, buoyed as much by the vision of Joss in that gown as by the still-tingling spot where their hands had touched over dinner. It was like two ships navigating closer and closer on a windswept sea. A moment later and Silverbridge would have blundered into something far more delicate.

His feelings for Joss had changed so much in the last week, but the moment he spotted that lifeless body in the water, he was shocked into realizing that she'd captured his heart in a way no other woman ever had. Their days together had shown him what a remarkably brave and spirited woman she was—protective of her father, deeply attached to her mother, willing to help him despite the personal cost to herself. He thought—believed? hoped?—that her feelings for him had deepened during their time together. He believed she was on the verge of two important decisions, perhaps the most important decisions of her life, and he knew her decisions were not yet set in stone. His
mind galloped ahead of the facts to a cottage filled with her voice and the laughter of their children. It was a foolish thought, he realized, for a man to have about a woman whose birth had occurred three centuries after his and who wore the ring of a man she had shown no inclination to abandon on her finger. And yet, in that at the Grey Lamb, when her fingers threaded into his, he had felt his life beginning to transform.

Dangerous, dangerous.

He rued the fact that Silverbridge had chosen that moment to appear. Her offer—for offer it had been—had been a test, even if she had not seen it as such. And he would have needed several more minutes with her in his arms to decide if he would guide her toward faithfulness in her engagement or possess her. He knew which he would choose for himself, but he was keenly aware he would be choosing for her, too.

As he drew closer to the inn, he spotted a familiar profile and, in shock, broke into a half run. “Nathaniel,” he called. “How on earth . . .?”

“A very unpleasant plunge into a river. 'Tis good to see you, my friend.”

“From the lions at the bank?” Hugh couldn't imagine how he had discovered the portal as well.

“Aye.” Nathaniel gave his friend a look. “Fiona was following you.”

Hugh thought of the scene with Joss that Fiona must have observed and felt his cheeks warm.

“Fiona's upstairs in your rooms, waiting,” Nathaniel said. “We weren't sure you'd survived until we got here. And the girl is . . .?”

“Fine. She's at the home of a friend.”

“Your landlady mentioned seeing you with a companion.”

The warmth turned into a full flush. Hugh was glad it was night out. “Aye. I brought her here first. But how did you survive the river? Joss and I barely made it out alive.”

“A very welcome branch. We nearly didn't make it. I don't know how anyone could have survived those rapids. And we walked several miles past the bridge when we got out, and try as we might, we didn't see your friend.”

Hugh felt the skin on his neck prickle. “What do you mean, ‘my friend'?”

Nathaniel's eyes widened. “I thought you knew, especially as he followed so closely on your heels. Fiona wasn't the only one following you. Reynolds disappeared behind the lion a moment or two after you and Joss.”

“Reynolds has known everything all along,” Fiona said. “We were right.”

Hugh had related the story of the map he and Joss had found secured in Reynolds's office as Fiona sat tight-lipped. The London, Edinburgh and Manchester maps were spread on the table before her.

“We don't know if he knew about the lions at the bank. It's possible Brand told him, but it's equally possible that the only reason he knows about them is from watching Joss and me tumble away behind them.”

“Why do you defend the villain?” she said. “Especially since it's clear it would be very convenient for you if he were out of the way.”

“Ours are not the only feelings to be considered in this situation.”

Fiona snorted. “You're being led around by your nose, and you don't even see it.”

The door creaked as Nathaniel entered.

Hugh felt his irritation with Fiona rise. “She saved my life. And she gave me this for you.” He pulled the last map from the tube, the one of East Fenwick, and unrolled it on top of the others.

Fiona took one look at the map and threw her arms around him. “My God! It's the map!”

“It's a copy. Joss found it in an archive.”

Fiona stepped back and looked from him to the map. “A copy is no different than the original,” she said carefully.

“In this case, it is. The copy was stored as a very small version. It involves magic of the sort I cannot explain. When Joss found it, she had it put back on the most authentic paper she could find, but if you look closely, you'll see it's not been rendered in the same ink.”