The Passion of the Purple Plumeria (26 page)

“If someone decided to use me as a hostage for his good behavior,” explained Lizzy matter-of-factly.

William gaped at his daughter.

Lizzy appeared completely unaware of the impact she was having. “So we packed up our things and bolted, didn’t we, Agnes? We even left a false trail,” Lizzy added complacently. “Just in case.”

The thought of the two of them, on the road, on their own, made William’s blood run cold. “Did you realize what might have happened to you, the two of you alone on the roads?”

“Nothing worse than what might have happened had we stayed,” pointed out his daughter.

William shook his finger at her. “You might have been robbed, you might have been raped, you might have been—”

“Sold into a harem?” suggested Lizzy brightly.

“I don’t think they have harems in Bath,” said Agnes doubtfully.

What on earth had they been teaching them at this school? “You might have been set upon by brigands,” said William sternly.

As he had been not so very long ago. He still had the ache of the wound to remind him of it. If it hadn’t been for Gwen, it would have gone even more poorly for him. Gwen and her sword parasol. The thought coaxed a reluctant smile to his lips, which his daughter, misreading, took as encouragement, nodding to her friend to signal that it was all right; the lecture was over.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” said William, looking around for Gwen.

“The Pink Carnation?” said Lizzy eagerly.

“She’s my sister,” interjected Agnes.

“No,” said William absently. Where in the blazes was Gwen?

A cold trickle of fear began to make its way down William’s spine. He hadn’t scared her off with his talk of cottages, had he? He could picture her on her horse, parasol aloft, riding into the sunset, like a knight in an old tale, off in search of new adventure. Alone.

William straightened. “I’ll just—”

He was interrupted by the loud report of a pistol.

“What the—” William felt his body go cold. “Gwen.”

“Who?” said Lizzy, but William was already off, pounding down the hall in the direction of the sound, the others hard on his heels.

“This way,” said Lady Henrietta, slipping ahead of him, leading the way through a drawing room and a music room.

A large harp toppled over with a twang.

“Sorry!” called Agnes.

There was a masculine grunt and a sharp discord as Lady Henrietta’s husband tripped and went flying, right into the pianoforte.

“Oops,” said Agnes.

William didn’t look back. Why hadn’t they examined the perimeter? But no, he had been too busy exclaiming over Lizzy. And while he was with his daughter, Gwen must have come upon one of the brigands. Either that, or one of the brigands had come upon Gwen. What species of idiot was he? Why hadn’t he demanded that they secure the area before engaging in joyous reunions?

A pair of wide French doors stood open, giving onto a balcony that led down to a wilderness garden below. And there, standing in the middle of the balcony, feet planted firmly apart, a smoking pistol in her hand and an expression of extreme disgruntlement on her face, stood Gwen.

“You’re all right!” William pounced on her, eliciting a startled squeak. The pistol dropped, but he didn’t care. He lifted her, swinging her around in a wide circle, sending her skirts flying. “You’re all right. Thank God.”

Gwen wiggled in his embrace. “Let me down. That . . . that . . .”

William staggered dizzily to a stop, lowering an impatient Gwen to the ground. He squinted at a man on horseback, trotting blithely away with no apparent feelings of haste. “Is that the—”

“Yes, and I missed him, blast it,” said Gwen, scrabbling on the ground for her pistol.

“You,”
said Lady Henrietta, in tones of deepest loathing.

At the sound of her voice, the man wheeled his horse, raising his hat to her. The wind carried his words over to them. “Always lovely to see you, Lady Henrietta. But as you can see, I haven’t time to chat.”

An arrow sailed over the garden wall, landing about six feet to his right.

“Farewell, Miss Reid,” the Chevalier called. “I recommend archery lessons.”

“It was the wind!” shouted Lizzy, but he was already off, leaning low over the neck of his horse, galloping across the fields.

“Quick! Someone! Follow him!” Gwen dropped her empty pistol and started to run. “He’s getting away! With the jewels!”

“Miss Gwen! Stop!” It was the dark-haired woman who had been introduced to William as Lord Richard’s wife, Amy. She lowered her voice to a carrying whisper. “Those aren’t the real jewels.”

Gwen skidded to a stop. “What?”

“Not the real jewels?” William echoed.

“Wasn’t it a cunning plan?” said Amy Selwick blithely. “We knew someone was after the jewels, so we massed our troops in front and put a decoy bag of jewels in the back—theatrical stuff mostly, but hopefully he won’t check it too closely before he goes. We made sure to make it look as though it were hidden. So you see, it’s really quite all right. He was meant to get away with them.”

“That’s why I shot so far to the side,” said Lizzy complacently. “Well, that and the wind.”

Wrapping his arm around his daughter, William threw back his head and laughed, light-headed with relief. “Nicely done!” he said. “Nicely done!”

“Yes, we thought so,” agreed Lord Richard. “He should be halfway to Paris before he realizes what he snatched isn’t the real thing.”

He and his wife exchanged a grin.

“But what if he comes back?” asked Lady Henrietta.

“He won’t,” said Lord Richard, and there was an air of determination about him that made William inclined to believe him. “We know who he is now.”

“We’ll have his likeness plastered to every pub wall in England!” said Amy enthusiastically. “He won’t dare show his face.”

“I hate the idea of just letting him go like that,” muttered Lady Henrietta. “Blast the man.”

Gwen’s voice rang out above them all. “Has anyone else here recognized the gaping flaw in this so-called cunning plan?”

Agnes started to raise her hand and then timidly put it down again, recognizing it, belatedly, as a rhetorical question.

“If,” said Gwen, her hands on her hips, surveying the group on the balcony with impartial ire, “we can identify him, he can also identify Jane.”

Jane stepped forward. “You mean he can identify Miss Jane Wooliston,” she said quietly.

Gwen waved a hand dismissively. “That’s exactly what I said. Now, what are we going to do about it?”

She was a warrior queen, calling her troops to battle, bloodied but unbowed. William felt a deep surge of admiration for her, for her courage, her loyalty, her undaunted spirit.

It was selfish, he knew, to wish she would toss all that aside and throw in her lot with him instead.

“It’s not the same.” Miss Wooliston regarded the little group on the balcony, looking into each face in turn. “The Chevalier can identify Miss Jane Wooliston, of the Shropshire Woolistons, cousin of Edouard de Balcourt. That will do him no good at all should Miss Jane Wooliston fail to return to France.”

There was a shocked silence.

In tones of horror, Amy Selwick said, “You’re not retiring, are you? Not when it’s all going so well.”

Gwen looked the most bewildered of all. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m not retiring.” Miss Wooliston’s hands were clasped tightly at her waist, the one betraying sign of nerves. “I will be going back into the field. But not as Miss Jane Wooliston.”

Everyone’s eyes were on Miss Wooliston. Except for William’s. He was watching Gwen, who looked as though she had been slapped across the face.

Dropping his arm from Lizzy’s shoulders, he moved closer to Gwen, trying to provide her the silent support of his presence. She looked like someone who had been walking confidently on a bridge over a rapid river, only to see the pieces start to come apart at her feet.

“It’s too dangerous for everyone to go on as we have,” said Miss Wooliston earnestly. “I’ve put you all in danger—Agnes, my parents. Miss Gwen.”

“I put myself in danger,” said Gwen gruffly, but William could hear the agitation underlying it. “I chose to be a part of this League. Remember?”

No one paid any attention to her. Their focus was on Miss Wooliston.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned over this past year,” Miss Wooliston said, “it’s that we can’t play at this by halves. The only way to do this properly is to cut all ties, to subsume oneself into the role.”

She looked up at Miss Gwen, apologetic and a little bit defensive. “Wherever I go next, I go alone.”

“The quest is ended,” said Plumeria. “The hurly-burly is done. The battle is lost and won. It is time for us to turn our separate ways, along the slow and winding path.”

Sir Magnifico bent the knee, his armor creaking as he moved. “Lady,” he said, and took her hand. “Did you think I should let you go so easily? You are the true jewel of this quest, and I shall have no other.”

—From
The Convent of Orsino
by A Lady

“I
expect you won’t be needing a chaperone, then,” said Gwen in a brittle voice. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, “You might have told me.”

Two years, gone, just like that. Everything she and Jane had been to each other, tossed away in a moment.

“This . . . precipitated the decision. I’m sorry. I wish we could have left it all as it was.” Now that the crisis was over, Jane looked very young and very uncertain. “This is for the best; you’ll see.”

She sounded as though she were trying to convince herself.

From a very long time ago, Gwen could hear William saying,
You love her
. He had been right. Jane was all the children she had, not the child of her body, perhaps—that child had been lost long, long ago—but the child of her heart. She had fought with her and nurtured her and taken pride in her accomplishments, in their accomplishments.

Was this what her father had felt like when she had turned her back and told him she would have Tim or nothing?

Jane was leaving her not for a man but for an ideal, but it hurt all the same.

In a rusty voice, Gwen said, “It was our League, all three of us, yours, mine, and Amy’s. You ought to have spoken to us before taking this decision by . . . by fiat.”

She saw Richard and Amy exchange a long look.

“We would be delighted to have you at the school,” said Richard with false heartiness. “We should have a new batch of recruits in for training in a few months, and your experience is more current than mine.”

“Yes, do!” said Amy brightly.

Then, as if that had settled that, they turned back to Jane, with an ex-spy’s interest in the technical details of her plans.

Gwen could feel the walls of Selwick Hall closing in on her. It wasn’t her brother’s house in Shropshire—that was true; she would have a purpose, a role. But she would still be here on sufferance, dependent on others for her keep. She was sick of being superfluous. Just once, she wanted to belong somewhere, truly belong, to be there because she was wanted, and not just because there was nowhere else for her to go.

She could make good on her previous threats and form her own League, but Jane was right; it was too dangerous with the Chevalier at large. And the truth of it was, she would glean little enjoyment from it on her own. It was the shared project that had been so exhilarating.

All around her, the others were chattering, talking, not seeming to notice her abstraction. Except William.

He was watching her with a concern in his eyes that made her want to weep, a foolish, weak reaction.

“Well?” Gwen said crisply. “You have your daughter back. Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”

And then he did something entirely unexpected.

“Marry me,” he said.

It came out so quickly that Gwen wasn’t entirely sure that she had heard him right. “What?”

“Marry me,” William said, more loudly this time.

Around them, other conversations trailed off, people elbowing each other in the ribs, turning to stare.

William took a step forward, his blue eyes intent on Gwen’s. “You didn’t want to go back to France anyway.”

Gwen felt a certain fleeting pleasure at the startled look on Jane’s face. But any satisfaction she might have taken was rapidly subsumed in confusion, a confusion so complete and entire that she wondered, briefly, if she were dreaming this. No, she couldn’t be dreaming it. There weren’t any dancing aardvarks.

“Are you proposing marriage to me?” she demanded, wondering if she might have suffered a blow to the head somewhere along the way.

“That is generally the accepted meaning of the words ‘marry me,’” said William. His voice was genial, but his eyes were watchful and his hands were not entirely steady. “I’ve only used them once before, but I gather that was the accepted usage.”

Gwen had stared down whole French platoons. She had swung from ropes, leapt from balconies, blithely exchanged blows with highwaymen and brigands. She had lived for two years as an enemy agent in a hostile country where the people ate snails and called it cuisine. But she had never known true fear until now.

She was deep-down, through-and-through terrified, and she couldn’t have said why.

“Why?” asked Gwen hoarsely. “Why now?”

“You’d have bit my nose off if I’d asked you sooner.” His voice softening, William said, “I’ll not see you someplace you don’t want to be. You don’t have to teach at their school if you don’t want, and I’ll not let you go back to that brother of yours. Surely I’m not such a terrible alternative?”

He wasn’t. He wasn’t at all.

And that was what was so entirely terrifying. It was the fact that she wanted to say yes, wanted it with every bone in her body.

William gestured broadly. “I haven’t the manner of excitement to which you’re accustomed, but watching Lizzy play with arrows should offer hazard enough.”

“It was the wind!” said Lizzy indignantly. “Well, it
was
.”

William held out his hands to her. “What do you say, my Gwen?”

“No,” said Gwen, wrapping her hands in the fabric of her skirt, twisting the material again and again. It was the only way. Otherwise, she might not be able to stop herself from reaching for him. “No.”

The smile faded from William’s face.

Gwen swallowed hard, making a desperate bid for dignity. “It’s quite all right. You don’t need to rescue me. Not this time.”

“Who said anything about rescuing?” She loved the sound of his voice, the cadence of it, the deep tone. It was absurd, all of it. Gwen steeled herself against the force of his smile, the way the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he said, “On balance, you’ve been the one to rescue me, and I’ve the hole in my chest to prove it.”

The man could talk the devil into confusion. But it wouldn’t serve. She thought of Jack’s mother, who had propositioned him in a garden and turned his life upside down. And yet, the man still blamed himself. But he was like that, she thought in despair. He picked up the wounded and the needy.

Gwen hated that the wounded and the needy in this case was she.

She didn’t want him to grudgingly take her home to save her from a fate worse than boredom; she wanted him to want her because he wanted her, desperately, madly, passionately. She wanted him to pine for her the way Sir Magnifico pined for Plumeria.

But that was fiction and this was real and she couldn’t let herself get swept away into something that would only prove painful for them both.

“Don’t try to talk circles around me!” Gwen’s voice came out too harsh and too loud. “I know exactly what you’re doing. I won’t be another stray you’re forced to drag home because you feel in some way responsible.”

“Forced?” William said incredulously. “Last time I looked, there was no one holding a pistol to my head—which, with the number of pistols here, is really quite remarkable. I’m offering for you because I want to, and there’s nothing in the least bit selfless about it. Or have you entirely forgotten last night?”

By now, everyone on the balcony was staring without the least pretense of restraint.

Agnes looked worriedly at Lizzy. “I don’t think we’re meant to be hearing this,” she whispered.

“Shhh!” hissed Lizzy, flapping her hand at her friend. “We’re just getting to the interesting bit.”

“That,” said Gwen primly, glaring down the two young girls, “is precisely what I mean. I won’t have you saddled with me out of an outré sense of duty. You needn’t martyr yourself to protect my reputation. I’m not twenty anymore.”

“No, and it’s a good thing, too,” retorted William, “for if you were twenty, you’d be far too young for me, and I’d be feeling like a proper cad for the thoughts I’ve been thinking.”

Gwen’s face went pink.

Miles exchanged a horrified look with his wife. “We don’t need to hear about those!”

William didn’t pay the least bit of attention. He had eyes only for Gwen.

“You wonderful fool,” he said feelingly. “What makes you think I’d be martyred or saddled or any of those other lovely words you chose? I’m asking you to be my wife because I’m terrified at the thought of your getting away from me. When you told me you were going back to Paris—don’t you think I wanted to tie you to the bedpost then and there?”

“Definitely didn’t need to hear that,” muttered Miles.

“I don’t want to wake up in the morning without you. If I run into brigands in an alley, I want you to be at my side. I want you to be at my side even if I don’t run into brigands in an alley. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She didn’t want to understand it. That way madness lay. It hurt to open oneself up to emotion; she had learned that lesson before.

“That you admire my way with a sword parasol?” she said hoarsely.

“I love you,” William said simply. “With or without your parasol. And I’m not saying that out of any sense of obligation or, heaven help us, responsibility. I’m saying it because I mean it.”

Gwen’s stays were too tight; she couldn’t breathe. She struggled for air, at war with herself, trying to think of something, anything, to say that didn’t involve either flinging her arms around his neck or running as fast as she could in the opposite direction.

“Mmph?” she said.

“I mean every word of it,” William said, framing her face with his hands, effectively blocking her off from the others with his body, giving her time to compose herself. He looked back over his shoulder. “And I’m trusting to everyone here to witness it. Since they won’t go away,” he added in an undertone intended for Gwen’s ears only.

Despite herself, Gwen couldn’t help but smile. It was a wobbly smile, but a smile all the same.

William leaned forward so that his forehead touched hers. “Is the idea of marriage to me that dreadful?” he asked, only half-jokingly. “If you can’t stand the sight of me, I won’t force my suit on you. But I’d the impression you might not find me entirely repugnant.”

“I wouldn’t say that I find you
entirely
repugnant,” said Gwen unevenly. “In fact—”

Snails. Firing squads. French fops. She had dealt with them all. Surely, somehow, she could find the courage to say just three little words. Only one syllable apiece. Why was it so hard?

“In fact?” William prompted.

“Oh, bother it!” said Gwen passionately. She would have thumped her parasol if she had been holding it, but since she wasn’t, she had to content herself with stamping her foot instead. “You must know how I feel about you. Haven’t I made a fool enough of myself?”

There was some debate about that among the various onlookers, none of which either William or Gwen noticed.

“You’re like the plague,” she said in frustration. “I’ve caught you and I can’t seem to find a cure.”

William gave a great burst of laughter. “It’s a good thing you’re writing a novel, for no one would ever hire you to write their love poetry. The plague! Good God, Gwen.”

She looked up into his laughing face. There was such joy there, such zest for life. Such zest for her. It made her feel humbled and strangely shy. “If it makes you feel better,” she offered, “I’m not all that eager to find a cure.”

He looked down at her, the laughter fading into tenderness. He touched his finger to her cheek. “I suppose I should be grateful for what I can get.”

There was so much warmth in his gaze, so much love.

Gwen felt something hard and cold inside herself dissolve and melt away. William’s generosity shamed her. If he had been honest with her in front of a whole gaggle of onlookers, how could she, in good conscience, do less?

Gwen swallowed her pride and her fear and said, “I love you. I do.” Then, in case that wasn’t clear enough, she added, “And I will marry you—so long as your children don’t object.”

“We’ll take Lizzy as a representative of the whole,” said William hastily. “Well, my girl? What do you think?” He clamped an arm around Gwen’s waist. “And quickly, before she goes changing her mind.”

Lizzy eyed her potential stepmother with an expression that could only be called calculating. “About this sword parasol . . . May I have one?”

“You can have ten of them,” said her father happily, “in every color of the rainbow.”

“But there are only seven colors—,” began Agnes.

Lizzy stepped heavily on Agnes’s foot. “Lovely,” she said benignly. “Ten will do quite nicely.”

Gwen glanced up at her husband-to-be, who was beaming proudly at his daughter. “She’s just like you,” said Gwen. “A rogue through and through.”

William grinned. “Welcome to the family,” he said. “And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

With that, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her long and thoroughly. Gwen wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. William was quite right, after all. The younger generation did need to be scandalized from time to time. It would do them good.

“This calls for champagne,” said Lord Richard, when Gwen detached herself from her happy husband-to-be.

“Or something stronger,” suggested Miles.

Jane stepped forward. “May I be the first to wish you happy?” Looking down, she added quietly, “I will miss you.”

They had never been demonstrative with each other. From Jane, it was the equivalent of hanging around her neck and weeping.

It was silly to feel guilty when Jane was the one who had left her first, but Gwen did, all the same. “You’ll stay for the wedding?” she said gruffly.

Jane nodded. “If you’ll have me there.”

In an uncharacteristic gesture, Gwen leaned over and kissed her former charge’s cheek. “Whatever you do, be careful,” she said. “And if you ever need a sword . . .”

“You’ll have two at your call,” said William, putting an arm firmly around Gwen’s waist.