How to Wed a Baron (23 page)

“Is it my eyes?” she persisted. “Do I squint? Or perhaps I frown? I might do that, as I really don't like being untruthful—it seems such a waste of
energy. Please, Justin, tell me. I won't rest until you tell me.”

“Absolutely not. I'm in love—I haven't turned imbecilic. Now, drink up the remainder of that beer, and we'll head back to Basingstoke. I still need to speak with Luka.”

She eyed the beer as if a snake had just poked its head above the surface of it. “I really don't like it,” she admitted, “although you probably know that, too. No, don't say anything, because I already know the answer. You certainly can be insufferable, Justin. You should have told me I wouldn't like it. And why must you speak with Luka? You said that tomorrow could wait for tomorrow, remember?”

He took her arm in his and walked them out of the taproom, pretending not to notice as she gave a quick wave of goodbye to the young man in the homespun smock and leather gaiters who had been looking at her shyly for the past hour—although she did see him smile while pretending to be stern.

As he helped her up onto the sidesaddle, he said, “Tomorrow I meet with the
Inhaber,
remember? Much as I'd like to forget, much as I wish he'd simply go away. I have a few questions for Luka.”

“About the land. I remember.” She turned the mare, and they walked the horses toward the end of the village. “The Romany don't want it, I don't want it. I still don't see why we can't simply give it to him. According to Loiza, it isn't even very good
land. It's really no more than a symbol. Do people actually die for symbols?”

“All the time, kitten, yes. People hate, fight and die for the damndest things. That's probably why I never questioned what Luka told us about the land. And the
Inhaber
did send his men to kill you. That's something not easily forgotten. Or forgiven. Shaking the man's hand tomorrow will not be the easiest thing I've ever done. Luckily, I've had considerable practice in being duplicitous.”

She wished he wouldn't talk like that about himself. He'd been a soldier. Granted, not the usual sort, but a soldier for it all. Besides, that was the past. It was now, and tomorrow, and the rest of their lives that were important.

There was a break in the neat hedgerows, and Alina turned the mare into the field beyond, leaving Justin little choice but to follow her. She rode between the harvested rows until she reached the end of the field and a small, nearly circular stand of trees where the land was too rocky to be cultivated. There she dismounted without his help and tied the reins to a low-hanging branch.

He dismounted as well, shaking his head. “There are at least three dozen beds at Basingstoke, kitten. We really should try at least one of them.”

“Oh, so you are assuming I'm about to seduce you, Lord Wilde. Is it my turn? Why, I believe it is. Perhaps later. Right now, I really think we should
talk about the
Inhaber.
” She walked over to a fallen tree trunk and sat down, then waited for him to join her. “Are you really going to include Luka? Because if it comes to a fight, he's still injured.”

“Worried about your secretary, Alina?”

“No, I'm worried about you. See? I'm not fibbing, because you can tell, so I may as well be honest, even if that makes me a bad person. You'd be so busy rescuing him that you might forget to rescue yourself. I think he should be made to remain here, at Basingstoke. You're not taking me, correct?”

He lifted her gloved hand to his lips, turning it so that he could kiss the bared flesh at the inside of her wrist. “Because if it comes to a fight, I'd be too busy rescuing you to remember to rescue myself? Yes, that's correct. Brutus and I will do very nicely on our own. We always have.”

“You didn't answer me. Are you taking Luka?”

“No, I'm not. I never planned to include him.”

She sighed, that one worry assuaged at least. “But you still have no idea what you're going to say to the man? He'll see soon enough that Luka and I aren't with you. He'll be very angry.”

Justin leaned in, began nuzzling the side of her throat. “I suppose I could prevail upon Wigglesworth to don his incognito-ness yet again, and hope the
Inhaber
is shortsighted. Must we really discuss this now? I'd really much rather you seduced me.” He took her hand, laid it in his lap, proving to her that
he wasn't completely joking. “Here, let me help you, if you don't know how to make the first move.”

“Justin,” she said quietly, tugging to free her hand from his grip.

“Darling. Try that, kitten. Try calling me
darling.
”

“
Justin.
The children.”

He licked her earlobe. “Exactly. The first one won't mind being conceived in a— Damn.” He straightened quickly, thankfully also releasing her hand so that she could move it away from its most compromising location.

She put a smile on her face and waved to the half-dozen children who were crossing the field not twenty yards from them. “Wave to them, Justin. I think they might believe you were hurting me.”

“You're not the one in pain,” he grumbled as he got to his feet, not only tipping his hat to the children, but removing it to hold in front of him. “We really have to begin considering making love indoors.”

Alina waved again as the children waved and then began to run across the field once more. “Tatiana naps in her room in the attic each afternoon, but Danica never seems to leave my dressing room. I think she knows. She looks at me all disapproving, so I'm more than fairly certain she knows.”

“Wigglesworth dances the jig in my dressing
room,” Justin told her as they retraced their steps to the horses.

“Oh, he does not. You really shouldn't tease him so. He worships you. Justin?”

Something in her voice as she said his name must have alerted him, as he turned to her immediately, taking her hands in his. “Kitten, I really don't want to discuss tomorrow with you. I want us to enjoy today.”

“Because you think it may be all we'll ever have?”

“No.” He looked at her so seriously, she had to believe him. “I think I can…redirect the man, point him toward a more pressing problem he doesn't seem to know he has. My problem is in getting close enough to him to have that conversation without having to dispose of any more of his men. I'm also going to pray that he's so grateful to me for passing along the information I have for him that he'll withdraw his accusations about his deceased guards. My worry, since you won't rest until I tell you, is how in God's name I'll ever be able to mend fences as it were, with His Royal Highness. If I fail there, it doesn't matter where else I might succeed.”

Alina's heart skipped a beat. He was genuinely worried about the Prince Regent. Her new friends had been correct; he already had more than enough on his plate, so it was clearly up to them to rescue him from the worst of his folly.

And it wasn't as if she'd actually be
lying
to him, which she now knew wouldn't work, thanks to her so depressingly expressive face. She simply had to keep him occupied, his mind on other things until it was tomorrow and time for him to ride off to meet with the
Inhaber.

She looked out over the field, and the children were gone. Good. “You know,
darling,
” she said, taking his hand and leading him back toward the trees once more, “this tiny forest is fairly dense, and there is all of this late-afternoon shadow, isn't there? Why, I imagine if we were to go no more than a few feet off the path, we'd all but disappear.”

Really. It was so easy to distract men. She might even call it child's play….

T
HEY'D RETURNED TO
Basingstoke to find that, for reasons only women knew—and definitely reasons only women understood—Alina was not left alone again with Justin until tea was served at ten o'clock and all three ladies announced they were retiring for the night, leaving the men to amuse themselves as best they could without feminine company.

Which meant that all three men made for the terrace and lit up cheroots Lucas passed around. Fragrant blue smoke began to rise in the cool evening air. Nice, actually quite good tobacco, but Justin would rather be with Alina.

“What the devil was that about?” he asked his friends as Tanner handed him a glass of port, not his favorite drink, but he'd manage it. “Why have your wives suddenly turned into duennas?”

Lucas blew out a thin stream of smoke, and then smiled. “If I might quote my wife?”

“As she seems to be the one in charge, yes, do that.”

“Nicole believes you have been indiscreet enough.
From now until the wedding—you do have one in mind fairly soon, correct?—you are to behave yourself. Again, not my words. Oh, and Lydia agrees. Actually, I understand she more than agrees. It would seem our dearest lovers have turned into wives. It would be depressing, except that they're enjoying themselves so much.”

“There's a special license waiting at my town house in London, courtesy of Prinny. If I can dare show my face there, that is. Clearly, as if I didn't have enough as it is, I now have new incentive to get back in the man's good graces.”

“Prinny has no graces,” Tanner said, leaning his elbows on the balustrade. “I was one of those unfortunate enough to see him harnessed and then winched up in the air so that he could be lowered onto his horse for some ceremony in Hyde Park. Richard led his men into battle in the Crusades. Henry fought side by side with his army at Agincourt. The Louis we propped up on a throne in Paris is so fat he can't lift his foot high enough not to trip over his own red carpet, and our own poor king George is mad as a hatter and has been fitted for his own straitjacket. Prinny can't even mount a horse without aid, and the only place he's led his countrymen is into debt. Truly, our only hope is that Princess Charlotte will grow up to be another such as Elizabeth, and bring some honor back to the monarchy.”

“Elizabeth, as I recall,” Justin pointed out, “had
somewhat of a penchant for chopping off heads. A man in my current position might be grateful that Prinny can be so easily distracted by simply placing a new, expensive toy in his greedy hands.”

Tanner and Lucas exchanged looks Justin did not miss, but could not interpret.

He tossed his barely smoked cheroot out onto the grass. “Pleasant as this company is, if I'm not to be allowed to see Alina any more tonight, I may as well go visit the major and discuss something that's been troubling me. I'll be gone by first light and hopefully returned in one piece by noon, free of at least half my problems. Wish me luck?”

“Will you need it?” Tanner asked him.

“I don't know. I may have used up the last of my store of luck when the Fates gave me Alina. But even the Fates can't be that cruel.”

“We've both offered several times to accompany you,” Lucas said, walking with him to the French doors leading back into the main salon. “That offer still stands.”

Justin clapped the man on the shoulder. “If your lovers have become wives, then their lovers have become husbands. And husbands don't go skulking about old church ruins, pistols drawn, exposing themselves to danger not their own. But thank you. Thank you both, most especially for keeping Alina safe here.”

This time he only caught out Lucas shifting his
gaze toward Tanner, who'd remained still, his expression impassive.

“She will be safe here, correct?” he asked Lucas.

“She'll be as safe as she can be, definitely,” Lucas answered.

Justin nodded. He was becoming an old woman, fretting when there was no need to fret. He smiled, shook both men's hands and headed upstairs to see the major, his mind already on the following morning and his meeting with the
Inhaber,
most especially the logistics that would be involved in getting past the man's guards.

Strange that he'd always planned how he would eliminate somebody. He'd never before had to plan for a way to keep his intended target alive.

Alina hadn't actually said the words, but he thought she knew: killing was easier.

At the head of the staircase, he nearly turned for his bedchamber rather than have another dreary conversation about the
Inhaber
Novak, but then headed for the major's bedchamber. He supposed he'd owed the man an explanation as to why he would not be accompanying him tomorrow morning.

He rapped on the major's door, and then was forced to wait a full minute before the man bid him enter, only to find him fully dressed and reclining atop the coverlet, his arm tucked in its sling. Strange again. Alina had told him that the major had been
up and about yesterday, and that he'd thrown off the sling, protesting that he was no longer so ill as to be kept confined to his bed.

“You've looked better,” he said smoothly as Luka slid to the edge of the bed and stood up, rather dramatically holding on to the bedpost for support.

It might be prudent to tear his mind away from Alina, away from the
Inhaber,
away from the Prince Regent, and concentrate a bit more on the earnest, clean-shaven major. A friend is not a friend merely because he says he is your friend.
You've been asleep, Wilde. Lost in love and misery. Time to wake up!

“The fever came back today. Knocked me flat, I'm afraid.”

“Ah, damned plaguey things, fevers. I hesitate to further distress you, but I find that before I go hunting up your
Inhaber
tomorrow morning for our hopefully productive tête-à-tête, I have a few questions about this disputed land that's caused us all so much bother.”

“Talk. Then it's true—you're actually going to
talk
to him at this meeting you've arranged. Lady Alina told me you hope to settle everything…amicably. But I didn't really believe her. As if such a thing is possible with a monster like the
Inhaber
Novak. You were bent on killing him. You went off to kill him that morning, remember? We'd discussed it, you understood. You agreed. It was the plan then, and it should be the plan now.”

Well, now the fellow was looking a little more robust, and his color was better, as well.

“Ah, yes, the
plan.
It came to me late, this revelation I've had, Major, but I've realized that I followed other plans, created by others, only implemented by me, for too many years. Always with the assumption that the cause was right and just, or at least right and just to somebody's mind. Now I find myself chafing at the notion of possibly being forced back in the role of tool, a weapon without choices of my own.”

“But that is who you are.” The major's lips curved in a smile; he'd have been well served to keep the mustachios, as at least this particular smile was neither pleasant nor flattering, but revealing. “I suppose we take off the gloves now, as you English say? In truth, I've been wondering when you'd come to me about the land. It was my mistake that got you to finally wondering in the first place, wasn't it?”

Justin hid his surprise at the man's unexpected candor—and that hint of disdain that was rather troubling. Had he been so intent on Alina, on his feelings of guilt concerning her uncle and the threat to her from the
Inhaber,
that he'd overlooked what was directly beneath his nose? He quickly cudgeled his brains for what had to be the correct response to the major's question; there was no room for error now. Not when he'd stumbled onto something he didn't yet understand.

“Yes, certainly. Time for candor. And it was
dashed clumsy of you, I agree,” he improvised smoothly, walking over to the decanter and glasses that stood on a table near the windows. “But clumsy of me as well for taking so long to realize what had been staring me in the face. Wine?”

“Thank you, no,” the major said, his tone once more light, conversational. “So, what exactly gave me away?”

Justin grabbed onto the seeming discrepancy he and Alina had discussed only that afternoon. “Must we?” he asked, turning about, one of the wineglasses in his hand. “Oh, very well. It made no sense, you see, that Alina could not sign away the land to the
Inhaber,
yet her detestable aunt Mimi could. A piddling thing, especially stacked up against all that has transpired these past days. The man's attack on Alina's coach, his minions armed to the teeth and skulking about Ashurst Hall? Both events lent considerable credence to the notion that her life is in danger, and the
Inhaber
's permanent removal the only real solution. Yet it continues to niggle, that small discrepancy.”

The major nodded. “Yes. Just as I thought. Loiza had several strong words for me on that subject after he'd spoken with Lady Alina.”

“She is the one who first picked up on the thing, truth be told,” Justin said, nodding, and at the same time surreptitiously measuring the major, wondering what he'd missed, how he'd so badly misjudged
him. Weighing the notion that the sling would make a convenient hiding place for a knife or small pistol. “Tell me more about your king, and exactly why he wants the
Inhaber
dead.”

The major didn't strike him as a man who believed confession good for the soul. He did, however, strike him as a man who would play for time until he learned whether or not more decisive measures were necessary. As Justin was doing himself.

And him standing here in his evening clothes, and without his knife or any weapon close to hand. Still, a bit of well-placed pressure on the man's wound should be enough to incapacitate him. If not, snapping off the head of the wineglass on the table behind him would turn the stem of the glass into a tolerable weapon.

Standing here, holding forth on what is at least outwardly a civilized conversation, while contemplating grinding his fingers into a gunshot wound, putting a wineglass stem through a man's throat. God, had he ever thought like a normal man? What all had he lost on the day thoughts like these became normal to him?

“The king? You still think this is about the king? That I would risk so much for
him?
”

At last Justin believed he understood. “You're Romany, aren't you? That business about the
In haber
hiring Romany as part of the army he raised,
and then abandoning them to be slaughtered by the French—men, women, children. That's true?”

“Unfortunately for my family, yes. From that day onward, the
Inhaber
has been marked for death. But he stubbornly refuses to die. Instead, he continues to prosper.”

Justin wanted to keep him talking, perhaps lower his guard. “How inconsiderate of the fellow. It all begins to come clearer, although far from completely transparent. No wonder you had found it so simple to arrange the caravans, the Romany protection for Alina.”

“Loiza is my uncle, and it was always planned to remove Lady Alina to the caravans, where I—we would be safer. In any event, she was never to be harmed or exposed to any real danger. The rest?” The major made a crude hand gesture that had Justin raising one eyebrow in near admiration. “Yes, the rest is lies. There is no disputed land, there never has been, other than in convenient legend. The land had only been a plausible story, although the lie difficult to maintain.”

“Oh, I wouldn't be so sure of that, Major. I swallowed the whole thing like some idiot schoolboy for longer than it pleases me to realize, among other things I may have overlooked. Discovering a fellow assassin so close to Alina did nothing to change my mind. Your hireling, I suppose? He seemed almost eager to guide my suspicions to my Prince Regent,
and I remember myself being damnably eager to point him in that same direction. Information you spoon-fed him, I'm sure.”

Luka shrugged, both his injured and uninjured shoulders. So expressive, the Romany. Sometimes to their detriment.

“It was imperative that you didn't think too much, but only believed what was in front of your eyes. That was Loiza's idea, once he decided I had bungled things. We'd considered others before choosing you, and that particular man had been brought to our attention. It was easy enough to hire him to lurk about the encampment in order to reinforce in you the belief that Lady Alina was in grave danger. He assured us he could speak with you and convince you of everything we needed you to believe. But something clearly went wrong.”

“For him, certainly. Although I congratulate your uncle on this much, as I certainly was distracted. Led by the nose might be more accurate, if personally damning. But now you're attempting to tell me that Alina has never been in danger. You disappoint me. I thought there were to be no more lies.”

“I'm telling you the truth. At least the truth as we'd hoped it would be.”

“Ah, I'm relieved. I was beginning to wonder if there could be any truth left anywhere in this,” he said quietly, remembering that the
Inhaber
had specifically asked that the major accompany them to
their meeting. “You're a bit of a bastard, aren't you, Major? I actually pitied you, believing you were in love with her. But that day the coach was attacked? That bullet had never been meant for Alina. It had been meant for the target it found.”

“The
Inhaber
had to know I would come hunting him when he learned I was to come here with Lady Alina. In Prague there had been…other attempts, but the man is always well protected. My name was somehow connected to those attempts, which is why I was asked to see the king in the first place. He made it clear to me what he wanted, and that he would help me. Yet even here in England, I would never again be allowed close to the
Inhaber.
”