Damsel in Disguise (47 page)

She wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard him. She wanted him to sweep her into his arms and ignore the truth of reality. She wanted him to devour her with that blinding passion she’d never share with anyone else. She wanted him to tell her somehow she would survive.

But he did none of that. To her great surprise, he dropped down to one knee and gazed up at her the way she had seen hungry hounds gaze at their masters.

“Julia St. Clement, now that my family honor is not about to be obliterated and my good name raked through the mud, I simply must beg you to do me the great kindness of agreeing to be my wife.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and her vision inexplicably began to blur. Her nose itched and tingled. Good heavens, had the man just asked her to marry him?

“Anthony, I . . .”

“Say yes, Julia!”

“But I can’t. Truly, you know I can’t.”

His face fell. “Why not?”

“Well, because I’m an actress. You have your duty to society, to your title, to generations of properly genteel Rastmoors!”

His countenance improved, and he breathed out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God, Julia. For a minute there I thought it was because you haven’t fallen back in love with me again.”

My, but the man certainly was full of surprises today. He asked her to marry him? Oh, he was a fool! It would be wrong, so scandalous and condemned. He’d only just regained the security of his good standing; she couldn’t destroy that now by agreeing to marry him, could she?

Hell, how could she
not
marry this man? Her resistance was nil, and he was still gazing up at her with love and devotion and desire and a hundred other wonderful emotions she could simply not exist without. Basically, she was incapable of denying him any longer. If he was fool enough to ask for her, then he deserved whatever fate he got. She melted into him, falling down into his arms and tumbling him into the overturned bag of flour.

“Drat it all, Rastmoor. I fall back in love with you every time I breathe.”

“AH, HERE THEY ARE!” JULIA HEARD LORD DASHFORD saying loudly as she and Rastmoor tried to inconspicuously rejoin the group.

It had been a ridiculous attempt. Clearly they’d been missed. Dashford and his lovely wife had been located, and the whole group from the storeroom—minus Fitzgelder—were waiting patiently in the large, formal drawing room. Rastmoor took his hand off her backside as they stepped in through the door.

“Sorry to keep you all waiting,” Rastmoor said cheerfully. “I had to, er, help Miss St. Clement with something.”

She nervously patted her hair to make sure her cropped curls were all in place. An obvious sprinkling of flour came sifting out. Drat. She thought she’d shaken all that off downstairs.

Penelope giggled. Julia refused to look at Lady Rastmoor to see what horror might be etched on her classical features. She focused instead on the floor, only to be appalled as more flour came filtering down like snow when she took a deep breath. Penelope giggled again.

“What is everyone staring at?” Rastmoor demanded. “You think you have an idea what transpired while we were elsewhere? Very well, I’ll tell you. I was downstairs asking Miss St. Clement if she would do me the great honor of becoming my wife.”

“You damn well better have been asking that, my boy,” Papa said, but she recognized the little glimmer in his eye. He approved.

“And she has consented,” Rastmoor finished.

Julia stared at the whitening carpet and waited for the explosion of weeping and gnashing of teeth that would surely come from Lady Rastmoor. But it didn’t come. All she heard was the happy chorus of well wishes from everyone else. Penelope especially. Finally, Julia made herself look at the woman who, for better or worse, would soon be her mother-in-law.

“So, this is the woman who will take my place at Gaberdell Abbey, is it?”

Julia’s nerve failed her, and she looked back down at the carpet. She felt woozy, to go from feeling such utter joy to be suddenly cast down to such wretchedness. She’d promised herself to Rastmoor not ten—well, perhaps fifteen—minutes ago, and already their trials had begun. Would he soon come to regret his choice of bride?

“I think she’ll make a marvelous sister-in-law, Mamma,”

Penelope said with far too much perky anticipation. Heavens, but just what did she think she and Julia were going to be doing as sisters-in-law?

“Don’t expect to be allowed much to do with her, Penelope,” the viscountess said regally.

Julia pinched her eyes closed and felt Rastmoor come up close behind her. She willed the tears not to form in her eyes. She loved Anthony, and he loved her; somehow they’d get through this together.

“At least,” his mother went on. “Not for some months. I have a feeling your brother is going to be rather jealous of his new wife’s time.”

“I most certainly am,” he said. “And protective of her if anyone should attempt to make her life unpleasant.”

Julia glanced up when she heard the woman begin to chuckle. She must have started at the sight, because another fall of flour drifted past her view.

“I’m sure you will be, Anthony,” Lady Rastmoor said. “But don’t get your hackles up on my account. You’ve made up your mind, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. Besides, I just witnessed this woman try to throw herself in front of a bullet for you. As a mother, I couldn’t hope for a better mate for my son. As long as you are happy, I will be happy.”

“Thank you, Mother,” he said. She could hear the honest gratefulness in his voice.

“So it’s official, is it?” Dashford asked. “You’re determined to marry her, come what may?”

“I am, though I’d hate to lose a good friend over it,” Rastmoor said.

Dashford paused, then shook his head. “You won’t. I’m the first one to acknowledge matters of this nature rarely follow common sense. Please forgive my earlier behavior, Miss St. Clement. My wife assures me it was inexcusable, but I beg your pardon, anyway.”

She could hardly believe it, but Dashford was actually waiting for a word from her. She swallowed hard before words would come. “Yes, thank you, my lord. Any offense is forgiven.”

“Very well, then,” Lindley said, moving toward the center table where, once again, the metal treasure box was resting.

Only this time, to Julia’s amazement, the box was open!

“Shall we get back to the business at hand?” Lindley suggested.

“You opened it!” Rastmoor declared.

“We got tired of waiting,” Penelope said. “It seemed you would be a while.”

Lindley cleared his throat and, thankfully, changed the subject. “The D’Archaud lockets fit together perfectly and made the exact key that unlocked the box.”

“You mean the D’Archaud locket and the St. Clement locket,” Rastmoor corrected.

“No, he had it right,” Papa said. “The treasure belongs to the D’Archaud family as do the lockets that open the box.”

“But I thought half of it belonged to you, Papa?” Julia said, confused. “You had one of the keys.”

“Yes, but I never claimed to own the key. The key,
ma petite
, belongs to you.”

“Honestly, Papa, how can I possibly own a key I’ve never even seen before?”

“I’ve kept it safe,
chérie
. It was your legacy from your dearest
maman
.”

“From my mother?”

Now D’Archaud spoke up. “We did not tell you for your own safety, my dear.”

She couldn’t much like being called “dear” by the likes of D’Archaud. What on earth could the man possibly know about her safety?

“It was a difficult time back then,” D’Archaud went on. “In the revolution. My father lost his life. Oh yes, he was a good man, but he had a great many things the people did not. And others wanted it. My brother and sister and I feared for our lives, as well.”

“It was a very dark, dark day,” Papa said. She knew it was true. All her life she had never been able to get him to talk about his life in France, those years before he crossed the Channel and began a new life.

“But your father was smart,” D’Archaud said. “He made a way for us to escape. Only my brother would not go. He insisted that one day he would regain all that the revolution had cost us. He refused to help our escape or give us our share of what was left of the family fortune.”

“So we took it anyway,” Papa said, making the long story short. “D’Archaud and his beautiful sister took their share of the treasure, and we sailed for England. His brother was furious.”

“
Mon dieu
, he sent men after us to retrieve the treasure. But, again, St. Clement saved us. He convinced us not to go to friends in London, where my brother would surely find us. Instead, he took us with him, to the life he knew—the theater. And we were safe there. My brother never thought to look for us among such common people as actors! I told you your papa is smart. And that’s why my sister married him.”

Julia thought by now she must be getting used to the constant string of surprises. She was not.

“My mother was your sister?”

“
Oui
, such a lady, your mother was.” D’Archaud sighed as he gazed past her, unseeing and lost in a memory.

“She was the daughter of a great man,
ma belle
. A gentleman of high rank. As I’ve always told you, you are a lady.”

She was becoming numb to the amazement. “But how come I never knew this? Why have you never told me any of this?”

“We couldn’t,” Papa said. “It wasn’t safe.”

“My brother was obsessed!” D’Archaud continued. “He hunted us for the treasure, threatened our lives and those of our children! Year after year, living like paupers and constantly on the move, it was terrible. I’m afraid it was too much for me. I got desperate and made some mistakes.”

“I couldn’t trust him any longer,” Papa said. “We parted ways but agreed to hide the treasure so that one day, when it was safe, our daughters would get what belonged to them. Trouble was, neither of us was sure the other wouldn’t go back for the treasure later on. So we found a solution.”

“We would each take a key,” D’Archaud explained. “It would take both of us to open the box.”

“And now you’ve done that!” Julia remarked. “So, what is this treasure?”

She stepped forward to look inside the box. To her surprise, which really should have been no surprise at all, given the way her day had been going, it was empty.

“It’s empty!” she exclaimed.

“No,” Papa said. “It has the code.”

She glared at him. What on earth did that mean?

“If you look, there are symbols etched on the box, one on each of the interior surfaces and, apparently, some on the outside. The box itself is the code.”

D’Archaud nodded enthusiastically. “That’s why we simply couldn’t let Lord Dashford bash it to pieces.”

“So where is the treasure?” Rastmoor questioned, clearly getting a bit weary of the endless journey they were on.

“Buried somewhere.” Both Papa and D’Archaud replied at the same time.

“And the code will tell us where?”

“Yes,” they echoed again.

“But wait a moment,” Julia said, confused again. “If you came up with the code, wouldn’t you therefore know where you buried the treasure?”

Papa laughed. “Of course! That is, if we had come up with the code. But we didn’t,
ma belle
. We let others do that for us.”

“Who? Who on earth could you possibly trust with something like that?” Rastmoor asked.

“Lord Dashford, of course,” D’Archaud said.

Now Dashford jumped into the conversation. “What? I never came up with any code or buried any treasure!”

“No, not this Dashford,” Papa said, laughing again. “It was your grandfather.”

“His mistress—who lived at Loveland—was my wife’s mother,” D’Archaud said.

Julia had to think a moment to let that all sink in. “So, your mother-in-law was old Dashford’s mistress, and because of this you let that man hide your treasure for you?”

“Quite so! Capital old man, he was. He buried the treasure, she hid the box, but they made out the code together.”

“So just how do we decipher this code?” Rastmoor asked.

Papa scratched his head. “Well, that’s become the sticky part.”

“We can’t find the book,” D’Archaud said.

“The book?” Rastmoor asked.

Papa looked decidedly uncomfortable. “It’s a slim volume, very plain binding, about so big . . . unremarkable to look at, I’m afraid. It was supposed to have been left in Loveland, but Dashford managed to find it and bring it here several years ago, apparently.”

“The cover was unremarkable, but I had the good fortune of opening it,” Dashford said with a wide grin.

Oddly enough, Lady Dashford was grinning as well. And blushing.

“Well, what sort of book is it? Did you check the library here?” Rastmoor asked.

“Of course we did,” Dashford replied. “We had ample time, waiting for you to finish helping Miss St. Clement in the basement.”