It Begins with a Kiss (6 page)

“What did Ian say when he found out?” she asked, stuffing those memories away.

“He hasn’t yet. The solicitor’s letter was sent to him before I started on my journey to see you.” With a firm squeeze, he let her hand go. “The important thing right now is that your sister is safe. You don’t have to run away from school.”

Even if it were true, where did that leave her? Did Mairead even know that Fiona had been frantic at the news of her disappearance? Did she care, or had she been charmed into complacency by a new family?

“I should be with Mairead until Ian returns,” Fiona said. “I should at least meet this grandfather of ours. How do I know he isn’t worse than the school, or everywhere else people have tried to manage Mairead? How do I know he really wants her? I mean, did he even look for us, or did he hope his son’s inconveniently Scottish wife and children would simply disappear? Who is to say I can trust the man?”

“Would my word as a gentleman suffice?”

She snorted. “My father claimed he was a gentleman,” she said, her focus internal, “and the only memory I have of him is throwing Mairead against a wall because she wouldn’t stop crying.”

“Ian is a gentleman,” Alex reminded her.

Fiona didn’t even answer that statement. She was sure Ian was a gentleman. She just couldn’t remember his having been around to be one in the last decade or so. She knew he’d been struggling to support them in the best way he could. But still, during the dark hours when the weight of what he’d left behind threatened to cripple her, she couldn’t help resenting him for his escape.

“I promise,” Alex said, lifting his hand to her cheek, “when this term is over, I will personally take you to Hawesworth. In the meantime I will hand-carry your letters to your sister, your grandfather, and your brother. But Ian is involved in something that could prove… dangerous to you all. Can I ask you to hold this secret a bit longer? Go back to school. Stay where you’re safe.”

“Why must I stay in school anyway?” she asked, impatient all over again.

“Because it would look odd if you didn’t. Any change in routine is remarked on. Please. I can’t stress it enough.”

She turned to him. “And you will come rescue me when it’s time to go? You’ll be there to introduce me to this marquess who has finally deigned to acknowledge me?”

By then maybe she would be able to actually comprehend the idea that she had a place in the world. That she might someday feel safe. That she need no longer hide who she really was. Because who she really was, was Lady Fiona Hawes.

Why should that thought inspire such panic? Alex was right. It was good news. Wonderful news. She would never have to scratch for food again. Never have to steal handkerchiefs or snatch the coal that fell from the cart as it passed up steep Edinburgh hills. She would be warm every day of her life.

Still, she felt as if her heart would explode.

Alex reached around to cup her face in his hands. He met her gaze with earnest hazel eyes. “I will take you to your grandfather,” he said. “I will make sure the marquess values you just as much as you deserve, and that you and Mairead are both safe until I can release you from our protection. And then, Lady Eloise Fiona Ferguson Hawes, I will dance with you at your come-out ball and applaud when you are presented to the queen.”

And sitting there on a wet stile in the middle of nowhere, with the rain beginning to fall again and no sound intruding but the gentle clamor of cowbells, Fiona began to believe that Alex Knight was the true gentleman Pip had always claimed. She believed that he would keep the promises he made, and that she would deserve them. For the first time in her life, she thought she might have met a man she could trust.

An hour later, Fiona stood with her arm through Pip’s as they watched Sarah’s coach depart down the lane back out to the Bath Road.

“Poor thing,” Pip said, still waving at their departing friend. “I don’t think she looked at all as happy as you claimed. I think she’s terrified and sad.”

Fiona barely noticed. As selfish as it was, she was thinking about Alex Knight. She was replaying every word he’d spoken to her, every gentle touch. And the kiss. How could any girl forget such a kiss, out in the rain with her hair snagged in thorns? Who knew that something as simple as sympathy could be so powerful? That kindness could kindle a heart?

“Fee? Are you there?”

Fiona startled to attention to realize that Pip was peering at her as if trying to diagnose an illness.

“I heard you,” she insisted, knowing she sounded distracted and impatient. “You may be right about Sarah. But there is nothing we can do about it. She made her choice. She must live her own life.”

Pip squinted at her, as if she were out of focus. “Are you all right?” the girl asked. “You’ve been acting oddly since you and Alex came back.”

“I’m fine. Just a bit chilly around the head.”

Pip giggled. “You do look like an escapee from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
… well, if fairies stood taller than trees. I think your new look will become all the rage.”

Fiona absently tugged at the jagged edges of her hair, where they had begun to curl beneath her bonnet. “The real
à la victime
hairstyle.”

Pip stared at her; just stared, her head tilted and her eyes half-closed, as if trying to see what was really causing Fiona’s distraction.

Fiona was about to yell at her.

“You’re really going to let Alex find Mairead for you?” Pip asked.

Fiona smiled and knew that she looked foolish. “I really am.”

“Then why do you look so smug?”

It took Fiona a moment to answer. She was looking past Pip to where Alex was pulling on his gloves over by the inn door. Had she ever seen a man who looked so at ease in himself? Who commanded his surroundings with nothing more than a smile and a nod? Would she ever forget the kiss they’d shared out in the middle of a cow pasture, where she’d left her hair to float in the wind? Her very first kiss?

No. She didn’t think she would.

“I’m not sure,” Fiona finally said, smiling at Alex’s grace, his long, lean legs, the aquiline arch of his nose. “I think, though, that I have found the man I’m going to marry.”

Pip looked completely dumbfounded. “Marry? What are you talking about? We were talking about Mairead.”

“Mairead will be fine. Your brother will go after her.”

Pip followed Fiona’s gaze. Then she looked at Fiona and back at Alex. “Oh, no,” she moaned, grabbing Fiona by the arm. “Oh, Fee, no. Not Alex.”

Fiona just smiled. She wasn’t ready to explain yet. She just wanted to savor the feeling of discovery by herself, like music heard in the dark.

Alex Knight. Who could have imagined?

“Fee, please,” Pip insisted, shaking her. “Pick somebody else.”

Fiona smiled down at her friend. “No, Pip. I don’t think I will.”

And for the first time it sank in that Pip didn’t have the appalled look of a sister protesting her brother’s good fortune. She looked stricken.

“You can’t,” she said, her eyes swelling with unshed tears. “Oh, Fee, I thought you knew.”

Fiona felt the first imbalance of disaster, cold hands dragging her down. “Knew what?”

Pip shook her head. “Alex is married.”

Olivia Grace has every reason to
despise Jack Wyndham, Earl of
Gracechurch, who scandalously married
and then divorced her. Yet when she
finds an injured Jack on a battlefield
wearing the enemy’s uniform, she can’t
resist saving him…

See the next page for an excerpt of

Barely a Lady

Chapter 1

Brussels

11:00 p.m., Thursday, June 15, 1815

All prey understands the need for concealment. Sitting at the edge of a crowded ballroom, Olivia Grace knew this better than most and kept her attention on the room like a gazelle sidling up to a watering hole.

Olivia couldn’t help smiling.
Watering holes.
She’d been reading too many naturalists’ journals. Not that there weren’t predators here, of course. It would have been impossible to miss them, with their bright plumage, sharp claws, and aggressive posturing. And those were just the mamas.

Olivia was safely tucked away from their notice, though. Camouflaged in serviceable gray bombazine, she occupied a chair along the trellis-papered wall, just another anonymous paid chaperone watching on as her charges danced.

The ballroom, a converted carriage house at the side of the Duke of Richmond’s rented home, was full to bursting. Scarlet-clad soldiers whirled by with laughing girls in white. Sharp-eyed dowagers in puce and aubergine committed wholesale slaughter of each others’ reputations. Civilian gentlemen in evening black clustered at the edge of the dance floor to argue about the coming battle. Olivia had even had the privilege of seeing the Duke of Wellington himself sweep into the room, his braying laugh lifting over the swell of the orchestra.

It seemed all of London had moved to Brussels these last months. Certainly the well-born military men had come in response to Napoleon’s renewed threat. Olivia had already had the Lennox boys, the Duke of Richmond’s sons, pointed out to her, and handsome young Lord Hay in his scarlet Guards jacket. Sturdy William Ponsonby was in dragoon green, and the exquisite Diccan Hilliard wore diplomat’s black.

With all those eligible young men afoot, it would have been absurd to think that families would have kept their hopeful daughters at home.

Tonight Olivia’s employer had insisted on shepherding her own chicks, which left Olivia with nothing to do but watch. And watch she did, storing up every bit of color and pageantry to record for her dear Georgie back in England.

“Oh, there’s that devil Uxbridge,” the lady next to her whispered in salacious tones. “How he can show his face after eloping with Wellington’s sister-in-law…”

Olivia had heard that Uxbridge had been recalled from exile to lead the cavalry in the upcoming fight. She’d also heard he was brilliant and charismatic. Catching sight of him as he sauntered across the room in his flashy hussar’s blue and silver, his fur-lined pelisse thrown over his shoulder, she thought that the reports had been woefully inadequate. He was breathtaking.

She was so intent on the sight of him, in fact, that she failed her primary duty. She forgot to watch for danger. She’d just leaned a bit to see whose hand Uxbridge was bending over, when her view was suddenly blocked by a field of gold.

“You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?” someone asked.

Olivia looked up to find one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen standing before her. Even sitting against the wall, Olivia fought the urge to look over her shoulder to see who else the newcomer could be addressing. Women like this never sought her out.

For a second, she flirted with old panic. She’d spent so many years trying to evade exposure that the instinct died hard. But this woman didn’t look outraged. In fact, she was smiling.

“It’s quite all right,” the beauty said with a conspiratorial grin. “Contrary to popular opinion, I rarely bite. In fact, in some circles I’m considered fairly charming.”

“I do bite,” Olivia found herself answering. “But only when provoked.”

She should bite her
tongue
. She knew better.

The woman didn’t seem to notice, though, as with a hush of silk, she eased onto the chair to Olivia’s left. “Well, let’s see who we can get to provoke you, then,” she said. “I think what this ball needs is some excitement—more than Jane Lennox making cow-eyes at Wellington over dinner, at any rate.”

Olivia actually laughed. “I think you might get some argument from all those men in red.”

Her companion took a moment to observe the room through a grotesquely bejeweled lorgnette. “It never occurred to me. This is the perfect place to watch absolutely everything, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely.”

“I wish I’d been sitting here when those magnificent Highlanders did their reels. I don’t suppose you caught a glimpse of what they wore under those kilts.”

“Sadly, no. Not for lack of trying, though.”

Olivia wondered why this peacock would choose to sit among the house wrens—especially since several of the wrens in question had taken umbrage. One or two sidled away. Olivia even heard the whisper of “harlot.” Again she fought the old urge to hide, but the attention was definitely on the newcomer.

As for that petite beauty, she appeared to take no notice. A Pocket Venus, she looked to be no older than Olivia’s four and twenty years. As fine-skinned as a porcelain doll, she had thick, curly mahogany hair woven through with diamonds and a heart-shaped face that might have looked innocent but for her slyly amused cat-green eyes. Her dress had been crafted by an artist. Draped in layers of filmy gold tissue, it seemed to flow like water from a barely respectable bodice that exposed quite an expanse of diamond-wrapped throat and high, white breasts.

“I noticed the way you watch everyone,” the beauty now said, lazily waving an intricately painted chicken-skin fan under her nose. “And I’ve been dying to hear what you’re thinking.”

“Thinking?” Olivia said instinctively. “But I think nothing. Companions aren’t paid enough to think.”