Royally Ever After (6 page)

And now . . .

He laughed. “Stay the night? Here? To rub salt in your mother's wounds?” Not to mention his own. “Are you a glutton for punishment? I'm not.”

“That isn't—”

“I'll stay at the Swan.” He'd passed the coaching inn on the way. He should have stopped then. The pause would have given him time to think. And think again. But no. He had to be the fool rushing in. He had to be the madman believing he could make black come out white. “It'll be easier to set out for London from there, and I can miss the crush when the world descends for the queen's wedding.”

The day after tomorrow, Queen Victoria would wed her beloved Prince Albert. The Lord Mayor had asked the populace to suspend their usual activities in honor of the occasion—not that anybody needed the suggestion. Most of London would be pouring into the areas near both St. James's Palace and Buckingham Palace as well as the royal parks, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the bride and groom.

Rothwick was among the privileged few with tickets to the ceremony, and he'd looked forward to hearing Barbara's opinions of everything and everybody.

Today was the day she was to have come to London. He'd intended to show her his townhouse and tell her she might do whatever she wanted to it. He'd thought they'd talk about paint and furniture.

What a joke.

“Please convey my compliments to your parents,” he said so calmly. “And my regrets . . . that I'm unable to accept your invitation to stay. I'll send a notice to the
Gazette
of our changed circumstances. Goodbye, Miss Findley.”

He bowed. And then, before he could be tempted to say anything more—and really, what was there to say?—he left.

Swan Inn, six o'clock

B
arbara didn't give herself time to think. She flung open the door to the private parlor
.
Heart racing and head high, she walked in.

Rothwick sprawled in a chair by the fire, long legs crossed at the ankles, one arm hanging over the back of the chair, the other holding a wine glass. His dark hair had dried in a tangle, and he hadn't helped matters by raking his fingers through it. He'd taken off his coat and unbuttoned his waistcoat, but that was all. He'd let his clothes dry while on him. His neckcloth had deteriorated to a wrinkled lump, his shirtsleeves hung like limp rags from his broad shoulders, his trousers sagged at the knees, and his boots had acquired a crust of dried muck.

She took in the sight in the instant before he looked up.

“Oh, Rothwick, you haven't even changed out of your clothes,” she said.

He stared at her for a moment as though he didn't recognize her. Then his dark eyes narrowed. “Not an apparition, it seems. No such luck. We're done, Miss Findley. Didn't you say so? Go away. Forgive me for not getting up, but I don't want to encourage you. You shouldn't have encouraged me, by the way—but it's ungentlemanly to point that out.”

“You're foxed,” she said.

“Am I? Good. I've been trying damn hard.”

This was what she got for hesitating and dithering. If she'd come sooner, he'd still be lucid. What could she expect to accomplish now? She wanted to go back out and close the door behind her and get started on the long process of making herself forget him.

But the image hung in her mind's eye: the brief, unguarded moment when he'd looked at her letter and she'd seen . . . a something in his eyes that might have been grief. A degree more evident was the disappointment that drew down the corners of his firm mouth.

And yes, it was most likely the money he was disappointed about, but there was only one way to be sure.

“I should never have expected this of you,” she said. “Getting drunk after being jilted. Could you not do something less clichéd?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “A sharp-tongued wench it is. You'd have been the devil to live with. I'm well out of it.”

“You're not the most accommodating individual yourself,” she said. “You come storming into a place—fee, fie, foe, fum—knocking aside any small, annoying things that get in the way. Like people.”

“If you refer to those pests who were sniffing at your skirts, that's exactly what one does with vermin.”

“In
my
world, those are eligible men,” she said. “But they haven't titles—”

“Or a shilling to their name—”

“Neither have you,” she said.

“But I'm an
aristocratic
debtor,” he said. He waved his wine glass in the air. “No, better than that—a peer. They can't imprison me for debt. I should have ignored it, the way my father did. Trouble is . . .” He brought the glass close to his face, swayed the glass a little, and watched the wine slosh against its sides. “Trouble is, the houses are falling down. On my head. Plaster.” He looked up at the ceiling of the inn parlor. “Sitting there at home, drinking a little wine, minding my own business, and down come little bits of the ceiling.”

He drank, set down the glass on the table at his elbow, and refilled it from one of the bottles crowding its surface. “Is that what put you off?” he said. “Everything falling to pieces? But it isn't
every
room. Didn't I tell you that?”

“You told me,” she said. He'd described the state of his houses and properties with a disarmingly matter-of-fact wit. Everyone said he was an overbearing, conceited, arrogant bastard. But she thought he was charming, and funny, too. And she found his sarcasm sweet. He was nothing like any other man she'd ever met, and she'd met scores. From the time she was seventeen, they'd been descending upon Little Etford to try their luck at winning her heart—and the ridiculous marriage portion her father had saddled her with.

All in hopes of this.

A title.

And of all the men, all the well-behaved, eager-to-please men, she had to fall in love with
him
.

“Very well,” he said, nodding. “No hard feelings. But it's damned inconvenient, Barbara. You might have told me sooner.”

“So that you could have courted someone else.”

“Of course. I had a list.” He drank, then refilled the glass. “My aunts made it. Didn't I tell you?”

“No.”

“Gad, I thought I told you everything. So easy to talk to.”

That's what she'd thought, too: He was so easy to talk to—though of course nobody in Little Etford would believe that.

“After we'd learned precisely how my sire had left matters, my aunts compiled a list of suitable females,” he said. He set down the glass, pushed some of the bottles out of his way—leaving one teetering near the table's edge—and with one long index finger he made as though to write on the stained table. “Here is Miss So and So, the daughter of a Brighton jeweler. Fifty thousand pounds. Here is Miss This and That, the daughter of a physician. Seventy-five thousand. Ah, here is Miss Findley. Two hundred thousand. Let me at her, I said. Let me at Miss Findley. I don't care if she's snaggle-toothed, squinty, and flatulent.”

“I know it wasn't easy for you,” she said.

He shrugged. “Men go to war and chance having their heads blown off. All I had to do was find a rich girl to wed. Not a problem. I've never been squeamish.”

“Yet it must have hurt your pride to be obliged to come to a provincial nothing of a place, to a public assembly, no less,” she said. She'd ached for him, for what it must have cost such a man to be forced by circumstances to stoop so low.

“It hurt my
brain
,” he said. “I felt as though I'd traveled to Madagascar or Outer Mongolia, to observe the quaint customs of the natives. I was all amazed to hear you speak English . . . of a sort.”

Was that what she'd seen in his face when he'd been introduced to her? Amazement? Was that what had made his dark eyes warm and had softened the taut set of his mouth into a hint of a smile?

“But there you were,” he said. “Three and twenty, with such a fortune, and still unwed. Impossible, thought I. The chit must have a wooden leg. Or perhaps she runs mad at odd times, and howls at the full moon. But there you were.”

He turned away to stare into the fire. “There you were.” He shook his head. “And here you are. Why?”

It was easier to talk to the back of his head than to look into those midnight eyes. “I owed you an explanation, as you said.”

“You explained sufficiently,” he said. “I'm destitute, not stupid. I've worked it out. I mowed you down, like the Juggernaut. Sorry about that. I was in a panic, you see. Couldn't let you get away. But you did. You got away.” Still without turning he waved the wine glass, and wine sloshed over the rim. He didn't seem to notice. His big shoulders slumped. “Go away now, Miss Findley,” he muttered. “I'm growing maudlin, and that's a mood best enjoyed in solitude.”

“Yes, I'm going,” she said. Her eyes filled, and she blinked hard. She had to swallow hard, too, to go on. “It's stupid, I know, but I wanted us to be in love, you see. Like the queen and her prince. Royal marriages are always arranged. It's politics and money and power and alliances. They never marry for love, do they? But I thought, if
she
didn't have to settle for less, why should an ordinary woman, who hadn't a single drop of blue blood in her veins? That's what I thought.”

She waited.

She heard a sound. It was faint but unmistakable.

He was snoring.

She started toward him, and put her hand out, to touch his head, wishing she could make go away all the trouble he carried in there. But she couldn't. She drew her hand back and went out, closing the door quietly behind her.

9 February 1840

Nine o'clock in the morning

T
he road was slick and muddy after the rain, but he'd ridden like a madman through yesterday's storm. Why not ride madly now?

He rode on, toward the house.

I wanted us to be in love.

He didn't remember stumbling to bed but he must have done, because he'd woken this morning in the bedchamber he'd hired. The first thing he noticed was the silence, the end of the rain's drumming. And the second thing was his aching head and her voice in it—saying something about the queen and her prince and wanting to be in love.

He'd told himself he dreamed it, and he was a maudlin imbecile for dreaming it, and he'd dressed and set out for London. He'd traveled a few paces along the stretch of the Old North Road past the entrance to the Swan's stable yard. Then he'd turned his horse in the other direction, like a moonstruck boy, to chase a dream.

Halfway to the house, reason gained the upper hand.

Wasn't that drunken display enough?

How much more pathetic do you want to look?

He drew his horse to a halt, and was preparing to turn when he heard approaching hoof beats.

At first he saw nobody, but the hoof beats grew louder, and a moment later, the horse and rider came round the turning.

He recognized the cloak streaming out behind her, the handsome green cloak that enhanced her delicate skin tone and deepened the green of her eyes.

He recognized the ease and grace with which she rode, and her headlong pace—the way she did everything, it seemed: bursting into a room, telling him he was drunk, refusing to tiptoe about his poverty, mocking his high-handed ways.

But I do love you
, he should have said.
How could I help it? How could you not see?

He saw the bird swoop down, aiming, probably, for some tiny creature scurrying in the ditch. Her mare shied and reared, and everything inside him froze. A heartbeat later, he was in motion, racing toward her, but not fast enough. He saw her struggle to control her mount, but something else—a slippery patch of ground, or some other distraction nearby—panicked the creature. He watched helplessly as it reared again, throwing Barbara down. Then he couldn't breathe.

An eternity later he was dismounting, then sinking into the muddy road beside her crumpled form. He caught her up in his arms. Her head sagged against his forearm. Her face was white.

“No,” he said. “No.” He pulled her close, burying her face against his heart, a great lump of fear in his chest.

She must wake up. The longer she remained unconscious, the greater the danger. Or was it too late? Was she breathing? He put his fingers to her neck, to her wrist, but his hands were shaking. He couldn't tell if what he felt was a pulse or his own trembling.

“You
must
wake up,” he said in the dictatorial tones she would have labeled
fee, fie, foe, fum.
“I won't have any of this . . . swooning. I won't—drat you, Barbara, you must wake up.”

She lay so still in his arms. “Listen to me,” he said. “I was so drunk last night I could hardly see straight. I wasn't sure, this morning, whether I'd dreamed you. Were you talking about love, or did I dream it? I must have dreamed it, because you couldn't be so thick not to have known.”

He shook her a little, but he daren't do more, not knowing whether she'd broken anything. “You must wake up. I came to tell you—and if you don't wake up, you'll never know, because you're shockingly obtuse. How could you not see? If I didn't love you, would I care whether you'd be happy, married to me? Of course not. I'm the Juggernaut. I would have browbeaten you and overwhelmed you and seduced you into changing your mind again, and I'd keep you seduced until I got the ring on your finger. But
no
. I had to be a hero. I had to want you to be
happy
, infatuated sapskull that I am, even if it meant losing you.”

He pulled her closer. “Dammit, Barbara. Say something. Do something.”

He heard a sound. He eased his grip a little and looked down at her, not sure he'd heard what he thought he heard.