How to Wed a Baron (14 page)

He could do this. He had to do this.

How many times had he been in this position? Too many. The French major who'd ordered the execution of British soldiers after they'd surrendered. The titled English general who'd been passing secrets to the French, supposedly brought down by an enemy sniper and transported home to be buried with honors so that no shame could be associated with the family name. The Swedish diplomat who had
resisted the break from Bonaparte and had fought against the institution of a secret treaty between his country and Britain and Russia against France. The pompous Austrian financier—for reasons Justin hadn't even bothered to learn, because by then he had been past caring. Did any soldier marched onto a battlefield stop to ask the name and occupation of the enemy he had been ordered to kill?

For Justin, the only difference was that he had often dined with his unknowing target only a few hours earlier, and more than once had even bedded the man's wife.

The hustle and bustle in the yard below him increased, until at last the coach seemed to contain its limit of trunks and other luggage, and the outriders were all mounted and ready to leave.

Justin relaxed his shoulders as the door to the inn opened one last time, taking in a long breath, ready to let it ease back out as he squeezed the trigger and put an end to Alina's danger, and quite possibly to his own future.

He heard the cries before he saw the man he'd first seen at Carleton House.
Inhaber
Novak emerged from the inn carrying two poorly dressed children, girls of no more than ten. He held one clamped tight in each arm; both struggled to be free of his viselike grip. Human shields.

For a moment, Justin thought he might vomit. He dropped the rifle as the
Inhaber
covered the few
feet between the inn and the coach, ducked his head and disappeared inside. Moments later both children exited the equipage, roughly tumbling to the ground and then quickly regaining their feet and running toward the frantic woman who had just exited the inn.

The coach sprang forward, the half-dozen outriders flanking it as it headed for the roadway and quickly disappeared, leaving behind only clouds of choking road dust, three horses and their dead riders, and the baron, the fugitive Justin Wilde, who could only look down impotently at his badly trembling hands.

“He knew,” he said at last. “That's where he got the idea. Damn him, how did he know?”

The big man picked up the rifle and then held out one hamlike hand to assist Justin to his feet before patting him on the back and making sympathetic sounds.

“Yes, you're right, my friend,” Justin said, determined to shake off what had just very nearly happened, what had happened before. “No sense rehashing my failure. He can't know for certain I was even here. And he has the letter. It's not as if we're totally out of the game.”

Brutus, clearly trying to cheer his friend, pressed his hands together and put them to his cheek, tipping his head almost girlishly as he smiled a wide, gap-toothed smile.

Justin nodded. “Yes, and we'll see the pretty lady again. And the scowling major, who warned me I was doomed to fail, so that he made plans of his own, thank God, and will no doubt enjoy hearing of my lack of success,” he added as Brutus made a show of twirling the ends of an enormous, nonexistent mustache. “Come along. We're off to Basingstoke.”

 

A
LINA WATCHED AS
W
IGGLESWORTH
carefully picked his way toward her along the narrow, rutted track that was somewhat the worse for wear after a morning of rain, the expression on his face a mix of horror and determination.

He was dressed as always in shimmering silver satin and ridiculous amounts of dripping lace, the style of his suit one that hadn't been seen in England or anywhere else in many a year, but one that matched his, as Tatiana termed it, hoity-toity ways.

Lifting his befeathered tricorn hat from his powdered wig, the valet swept Alina an elegant bow and then gave in to his obvious distress. “Surely, my lady, this is a jest. We cannot possibly be abandoning the comfort and consequence presented by my lord's fine coaches in favor of—” he pointed toward the gaily painted caravans in abject horror “—
those.
”

“Oh, Wigglesworth, but we are. And we do it, I understand, with the full blessing of his lordship. The coaches will return to the main road as soon
as we transfer the most basic of our needs to these two fine equipages that have been waiting here for us, the bulk of our baggage still visibly strapped to the coaches and ready to lead anyone who might somehow stumble over them and then follow them off on a merry chase while we safely proceed to our next destination.”

Wigglesworth looked about in panic as a few—a very few—bits of baggage were lowered to men waiting to transfer them to the caravans. “I see none of his lordship's baggage, my lady. His ensembles? His linens? His tins of food? But…but how is he to perform his toilette? How am I to present him in his best light? How…how will he
survive?
”

Alina's smile faded. “His lordship most probably won't be here at all, Wigglesworth. The coaches go to a seaport by the name of Rye, the major tells me, and he will be reunited with his belongings when they are shipped off to their final destination in Brussels. Mine,” she added without much interest, “remain for the most part at Ashurst Hall, and the trunks you see are in fact empty.”

The valet looked to the coaches and then back to the pair of gaily painted caravans. “But…but where am
I
to be? Nobody told me.”

“Why, I don't think I know, Wigglesworth. I'm sorry. I supposed you'd continue on to Rye with the coaches, and I imagine the baron did as well, although the major insists that no bad penny ever
disappears forever, and he is confident the baron will show up here eventually, which will mean he has failed to…to eliminate our problem as simply as he'd hoped.”

Had she ever prayed harder for failure, even as she stormed heaven with entreaties to keep Justin safe? And did that make her the most terrible person in the world?

Wigglesworth turned his hat round and round in his hands, clearly caught on the horns of a dilemma.

If he opted for Rye and a reunion with his employer in Brussels, he could continue on in comfort, as he'd been doing for the past three or more hours, ever since leaving Ashurst Hall. Unless, of course, the
Inhaber
's men accosted the coaches and became perturbed when they did not discover Lady Alina inside one of them. Why, they might even take out their anger and frustration on his fragile body, mightn't they?

With Brutus nowhere to be found, he would be defenseless. After all, he might pretend that it was his sartorially enhanced figure and his consequence as the baron's man that opened inn kitchens and such to him and his demands, but he knew it was Brutus standing at his back as he made those demands, smiling his gap-toothed smile as he drew up his hands into huge fists, who made the difference
between success and being stuffed upside down in the midden.

On the other hand, if his lordship was not successful in his mission—heaven strike him down for thinking such a calumny!—who would take care of him if his own personal manservant had been too particular to travel in a rackety contraption that looked very much like a small red house on wheels, accompanied only by Lady Alina and a gaggle of variously toothless and garishly clad creatures who all seemed to be even now gaping at him as if he were the most amusing creature on earth? Who would shave his lordship if he were not available? Who would see to it that his linen was spotless? Who would cut the fat off his meat? Why, the man couldn't exist without him!

When the coachies climbed back up on the boxes, Wigglesworth turned and ran toward them, waving his arms wildly and calling out, “Wait! Wait!”

“Comin' with us, pretty man?” one of the coachies called down to him.

“I…don't be ridiculous! Someone has to remain to protect the lady, what with all you huge, strapping men deserting her here, in the middle of God only knows where,” Wigglesworth declared even as he climbed halfway into the coach and pulled out his most important case, the one containing all his most prized possessions (including a half-dozen bars of
scented soap; he was already convinced there could be no soap in either of the caravans).

He stepped back onto the roadway and pointed imperiously at a large black trunk strapped to the boot of the first coach. “And that one.”

“Nope,” the coachie said, shaking his head. “Stays with the coach.”

Wigglesworth was not by nature a brave man. One might say he was not by nature even a timid man. But he did have his priorities, and his limits. Traveling without his lordship's own fresh linens exceeded those limits.

A rather dashing yet dainty ivory-handled pocket pistol of a type most often seen in the reticules of the more daring ladies in society appeared in Wigglesworth's hand. “It might well not prove a fatal shot, but I won't miss, either,” he told the coachie. “The black trunk, if you please. Now.”

One of the outriders, who had been amusing himself by dancing about behind Wigglesworth, imitating him for the delight of his fellows, had nearly reached the valet when Alina pressed the barrel of the pistol she'd earlier taken for herself from the coach into the small of his back.

“Let him alone, please,” she said quietly. “Clearly he is under considerable duress. We will take this one trunk. In point of fact, you, personally, will offload it for him and place it in one of the caravans. Are we agreed on that?”

“Yes, milady,” the outrider said meekly, and Alina quickly put the pistol behind her back and smiled at Wigglesworth as he turned to her in triumph at having rescued the precious trunk.

“So, you're going to travel with us,” she said, happily letting go of the pistol as Tatiana casually strolled past behind her and took it from her. “Does that mean that you think his lordship will be joining us?”

“I pray he won't, as he is certainly unused to such…simplicity,” the valet answered, sighing and looking rather longingly at the coaches as they moved off, heading once more to the main road. “But as I do him no good at all in Rye or on a ship bound to wherever it will be bound, I see my place as here. His lordship will have me fetched in any case,” he added more brightly. “He can't survive without me, you understand.”

“We're ready to go, my lady,” Tatiana said, joining them. “He is to come with us?”

Wigglesworth drew himself up straight. “He is.”

Tatiana nodded, eyeing him up and down as if measuring him. “When we get to the camp, I'll see if someone can find him some clothes. Perhaps one of the children has extra.”

The valet's eyes grew so wide they seemed in danger of popping straight out of his head. “I beg your pardon,” he said haughtily.

“Not mine you should be begging,” the companion said, winking at Alina. “It's everyone who has to look at you who you should be apologizing to. My lady—that is,
Magdaléna
—there is clothing for you in the first caravan. Danica is grumbling mightily, but she is seeing to sorting it all out and will help you change. Then we must be going.”

Alina thanked Tatiana and then looked kindly at the woe-begotten face of the valet. “We have to do this, Wigglesworth. The major arranged it all even before the ship docked here in this country, and the Romany will protect us as we travel on. We will keep to the back roads the Romany know so well, and we will be safe. But not if we don't appear to be Romany ourselves, or otherwise all this fine subterfuge will have gone for naught. You do understand, don't you? It will be an adventure, Wigglesworth, a grand adventure.”

“Playing the page and watching as that rascal Napoleon greeted his lordship at the Grand Trianon at Versailles, all unknowing we were there to steal his plans for the proposed march on Russia, my lady.
That
was a grand adventure.
This,
begging your ladyship's pardon, is a mockery of all that is civilized. If I am needed, I will be in my…domicile.”

And with that, Wigglesworth was off, heading for the caravan holding his case and the coveted black trunk. He was no longer tiptoeing through the mud, but rather ignoring it, strutting with his nonexistent
stomach pushed out, his shoulders flung back, his arms straight as they sawed back and forth through the air, front to back.

“It's called a
vardo,
not a domicile,” Alina was left to say quietly, knowing she had just been firmly put in her place.

A
S THEY HAD BEEN HEADING
in nearly diametrically opposite directions, and because Justin could only estimate where, generally, the Romany camp might be, it was not until he smelled the smoke from the cooking fires that he was able to track it to its source…and to Alina.

He knew that their progress for the past mile or more had been noted, could actually feel the eyes watching him and Brutus from the trees, and that comforted him, although he wouldn't be truly at ease until he saw Alina.

He'd been alone for a long time, and had convinced himself that he would continue alone, without feeling the loss. And then Alina had stood at the head of the gangplank in that ridiculous cloak and his carefully crafted world had tipped on its axis. Before he'd known who she was, why they'd been brought together the way they had, he'd already known she was someone who could shake him to his core—wake him up, because he'd been asleep for too many years, even as he'd traveled the Continent
doing the Crown's bidding, even as he'd believed his one true happiness would be attained only if he could return to England, no matter what the means, or the cost.

Now the prospect of departing England, never to return, seemed a simple thing. Watching Alina leave him last night had been the most difficult thing he'd ever done, but he had been right to send her away. He didn't know if he could survive leaving her another time.

But he'd find out….

They rode into the camp at a sedate walk, and he counted the caravans. Eight in total, and in varying stages of repair and disrepair. He'd never known this many caravans to travel together here in England. That could be problematic, most especially when he informed the major that at least two of them would have to go.

The last thing he wanted was to attract attention as “those damned thievin' Gypsies” often did in the less enlightened areas of the country. If there was one sin Justin rarely committed, it was overestimating the intelligence of his fellow man and thereby underestimating the chances of something or someone totally unrelated to the point causing trouble for him.

As he led the way through the camp, caravans on either side of the clearing, mongrel dogs barked and ran around the horses as the men, from boy to man
to aged grandfather, fingered the weapons stuck into their wide waistbands. Women raised themselves from their vigils over the campfires, pressed hands to aching backs as they pushed their ample bosoms forward and eyed him with a frank appraisal that had him smiling and tipping his hat to them all.

“Brutus,” he said, his lips barely moving, “as I lack eyes in the back of my head and am loathe to turn around as we travel this gauntlet, I do hope you're smiling as you demonstrate how harmless you are. And perhaps a cheery wave to those kiddies over there wouldn't come amiss. We'll dismount at the last caravan once we're past it and wait for someone to alert the major that we're here. Unless Wigglesworth does it for us. What the devil is he doing here?” he ended as his valet cried out his name in a voice that could probably be heard for miles.

“My lord!” Wigglesworth yelled once more. “Thank the lofty heavens you have come to rescue me! I vow, I cannot exist like this for another moment!”

Justin turned the bay about and looked back from whence he'd come, taking in the small clearing and the caravans and the Romany who still watched him, but now with wide smiles on their faces.

“Wigglesworth?” he said in some astonishment a moment later. “What in the name of all that's wonderful are you supposed to be? My God, man, have you no pride?”

“Not any longer, my lord, no,” the valet said, sighing deeply as he waited for Justin to dismount. “It was either this or show my head to the world, which I most firmly and reasonably refused to do.”

Justin attempted to take in the apparition standing before him clad in a voluminous homespun blouse, its rather indiscreet neckline embroidered in red and green thread, a wide green sash about his waist above a black skirt, also embroidered, the fabric shiny in places from wear, all but threadbare in others. Atop his head was one of his wigs, still showing signs of the powder he used on them all, but combed out so that it hung in straggled disarray to his—dear God—bony bare shoulders.

From somewhere behind him, Justin could hear Brutus gasping for breath.

Justin was a gentleman, raised to never betray shock or surprise unless either was expected of him. It took all of his long years of hiding his true feelings to help him maintain a bland countenance at the moment, however.

“Please pardon my curiosity, but what would be wrong with your head, Wigglesworth, that you'd consent to…this.”

The valet walked closer and crooked his index finger, so that Justin lowered his head to listen to the man's confidence.

“I have no hair, my lord.”

“Really.” Justin bit the insides of his cheeks. “All
these years together, Wigglesworth, and I had no idea. None at all?”

“I shave it off every morning, my lord. My wigs fit much better that way. Many in the last century did the same.”

“Yes, I seem to remember something about that. So, beneath that fairly ruined wig there is…”

“Nothing save my bald pate, my lord. I attempted to tie one of those colorful handkerchiefs about my head, as some of these people seem to do, but it…it kept sliding off, my lord.” Wigglesworth lifted his chin in something nearing defiance. “I cannot allow anyone to see my naked head, my lord. It isn't proper, and might frighten the ladies.”

“At the moment, Wigglesworth, you're doing a fair job of frightening me, if you're at all concerned with my sensibilities. But I'll bow to your ingenuity if you're content with the costume.”

“Disguise, my lord, not a costume,” the valet corrected. “I am incognito.”

“Not to mention incomprehensible, and rendering me nearly incoherent,” Justin muttered under his breath as his attention turned to the far side of the camp, because he believed he had heard his name being called. “As long as you're happy, Wigglesworth.”

“Happy? I am submerged in the depths of despair and still sinking, my lord, but to serve you, I will not complain. Oh, and my name is now Papin, my lord,
for the duration of my incognito, um, incognito-ness. It means gray-haired lady.”

“How very wonderful for you. But if we are to be players in this,
Papin,
I am no longer
my lord,
or even
sir.
For the nonce, you must address me as Justin.”

Wigglesworth staggered where he stood. “But I couldn't!”

“You'd rather find a new employer once I am caught out and hanged? You'll not find another as lenient as me so easily.”

Wigglesworth stood there, silent, before saying, “Just—Justin would not be good, my lord. Someone might still suspect. Better you take a Gypsy, er, Romany name. I will go ask the old lady who gave me my name, and—”

“Justin!”

All thoughts of his name, or Wigglesworth and his skirts—not to mention his chicken breast—fled as Justin turned to watch Alina running toward him across the field.

She was clad in a costume much like Wigglesworth's: a blouse, a scarf tied about her waist, a full skirt to her ankles. But that was where all similarity ended.

Her unbound hair trailed out behind her as she ran, her bright red skirt held up and showing glimpses of several lace-edged white petticoats. Her breasts strained against the ruffled neckline of her
blouse, and the bright green scarf turned her waist into an incredibly small span, one he could easily encircle with his hands.

He took two steps toward her, ready to open his arms and catch her as she flung herself against him. He would lift her high off the ground, twirl her about and then draw her slowly down his body until he could kiss her smiling mouth.

Except that, still a good ten yards away, she suddenly stopped running, even as his imagination continued traveling down a path he knew he should not tread. He could see her composing herself before she began to walk toward him again.

Had she remembered that she should be angry with him? Even as he had brought himself back to the knowledge that he had no right to her affection?

“You're safe,” she said at last. “Not…not that I was worried.”

“Good. The last thing I would care to do, Alina, would be to cause you worry. You look…well. There was no trouble making the exchange? Are the accommodations suitable?”

“The accommodations are marvelous,” she told him, finally smiling again. “I have always wanted to ride in a
vardo,
but I wasn't allowed, of course. To think I had to travel all the way to England to finally get my wish. Luka will want to know that you're here. He's asleep in the last
vardo,
back that way. It's probably too soon for him to be attempting
to take command. He's feverish again. Tatiana and I were putting cool wet cloths on his head when someone told me you had arrived.”

“Then perhaps it's as well that I'm here, although you have to have realized that I am here because I failed. Your nemesis is still breathing.”

“Yes, but so are you,” Alina pointed out, as if that balanced the scales. “Does this mean we will not be traveling to your friends at Basingstoke?”

He chose his words carefully. “No, nothing has changed there. I want to keep heading north, until you're safe at Malvern. I made more than one plan, and the second may work where the first failed. Alina—”

“Magdaléna,” she corrected, pulling out her skirt and slowly turning in a full circle in front of him, pausing with her back to him to look over her shoulder at him in a way that pierced his heart. “I am Magdaléna, a simple Romany girl and no longer
my lady.
We've been practicing all afternoon, Tatiana and Danica and I, so that we are never caught in a mistake.”

“Yes, Wigglesworth—that is, Papin—told me. He tells me the name means gray-haired lady. But by the look on that fellow's face over there, the one eavesdropping on us even now, I'm not convinced that's correct.”

Alina lowered her head, her cheeks flushing. “Poor Wigglesworth. No, Papin does not mean gray
haired lady. I was told it means
goose.
” She looked up at Justin again. “But Luka would not allow any of the other names they wanted to give the poor fellow. I think some of the suggestions were rather…naughty.”

“I'll remember that when Wigglesworth comes to me with my name for the duration.”

“You can simply ask Luka. He speaks Romani.” She then looked past him and waved to Brutus, apologizing for not greeting him at once.

Justin knew he could dredge his mind for days and not come up with the name of another woman who had even taken the time to say hello to Brutus. Or worry herself about Wigglesworth, for that matter. Add to that the fact that, rather than hiding in her caravan, terrified, she seemed to be enjoying herself mightily.

“This is an adventure for you, isn't it, kitten?” he asked her as they walked between the rows of caravans on their way to see Luka.

“My father often told me that all of life should be an adventure. Yes, I am enjoying myself, except for the times I remember that
Inhaber
Novak wants to see me dead in order to steal lands from these wonderful people. You never saw him today?”

“I saw him,” Justin answered shortly. “I will see him again. You're not to worry about the man.”

“I worried more that I wouldn't see you again. I know what you said. That I should forget what
happened ever happened. That you think I was only…curious. But how can that be, Justin? Something did happen. How can something have changed nothing?”

Justin stopped walking and turned her to him, his hands on her upper arms. “Nothing has changed, kitten. My plans have only been delayed.”

Her eyes searched his as if looking for answers to questions she wasn't sure she dared ask, but could not resist asking. “You left this morning without a word of goodbye. Was…was that easy for you? Because it wasn't easy for me.”

“Christ…” Justin took her hand in his, and they continued walking toward the last caravan. She held on tight, trusting him. Him! Nobody should ever trust him, let alone an innocent young woman like Alina. “I knew last night was a mistake. I knew it, and yet I allowed myself to…” He squeezed her hand. “You're young, vulnerable. And I'm a very bad man.”

“The Bad Baron. Yes, Charlotte told me some call you that.”

“I've been called worse by those who know me best. Listen closely, Alina. You don't care about me. You don't know me. What happened…what very nearly happened last night would have been the same with any man who knew only the half of what I know. You were curious, any fool could have seen that, and I was available. I didn't rouse your
heart, kitten. I awakened your body. That's all it was. That's all it could ever be for us, for reasons I've already explained. Someday, someday soon, you'll travel to London with Tanner and Lydia, and you'll meet a man worthy of you. In a year, you won't even remember me.”

“Don't say that!” she commanded, cutting him off. “How dare you presume to tell me what I think, what I feel? How
dare
you!” And then she turned on her heel and ran from him, her glorious black hair lifting in the breeze the way it had a lifetime ago, when his heart had swelled as she'd run toward him.

 

A
LINA REMAINED IN HER
caravan for several hours, until dinner was over and the children had all been gathered up and tucked into their beds. Only then did she venture out into the center of the camp, on the hunt for Stefan, the young Romany who had driven their caravan that afternoon.

Stefan was very pretty. Even Danica, who never unbent enough to indulge in casual conversation, had remarked that Stefan could snap his fingers at any silly female and have her come running to him.